Adventures in China: Day 11

Day 11: Anhui Healing Home Day!

5:45am lobby call. Ugh. We said goodbye to our hotel and Yichun with no desire to stay any longer.

We loaded up on the bus for a 3 hour ride back to the Nanchung airport.

Our bus driver was driving like a mad man. All the drivers are crazy here. It’s actually quite fascinating to watch. There are somehow very, very few accidents. Sometimes it’s just best to close your eyes and not watch while they are driving. Especially taxis.

There was beautiful scenery, again. It’s so green here. And it was rainy, of course.

It was hard to fall asleep on the bus, especially with all the honking, swerving and braking.

We get the airport, board pretty much right away, take a 1 hour flight to somewhere I can’t remember, then another 2 hour bus ride to Hefei. So exhausting. I’m so sick of that bus. Here are some pics of us entering the city.

We eat and then wait about an hour until Phil and I leave to go visit a healing home for orphan babies with cleft palate. It’s an organization call Love Without Boundaries, and they have various healing homes through China. Babies come there from orphanages, and they receive pre and post operation care. We had arranged with the director of the Anhui Healing Home several months earlier for this visit.

We take a taxi to a residential area, and arrive at an apartment building. Zhang Ming, the director, greeted us on the street and took us up. We were a little apprehensive of what we would find. Would it be a nice, clean place? Or would it be a depressing, dirty place? The elevator ride up did not give us much hope, as a dog had peed in it and it smelled overwhelmingly of urine. But our assumptions were wrong. We walk into this lovely, warm, clean, inviting home. The floors were wood. The walls were painted pastels. The windows had curtains. The floors had rugs. There were several nice cribs in each room, plenty of toys, walking chairs, rocking seats, etc. The babies were clean and in cute clothes. We took soooo many pics, but I won’t put them all on here. I’ll do a separate blog post just for that. Here are our favorites.

This little girl was my favorite. Could she be any cuter?!?! She smiled and laughed almost constantly. As you can see, she hasn’t had her surgery yet, but her smile just overrides that fact. Her name, translated to English, is Dragon Plum. Dragon because she was born in the year of the Dragon. I love it. I think she is 5 months old. It’s hard to remember all the details.

This next little one was also a very smiley baby, and also a wiggleworm. I can’t remember if it’s a boy or girl, or the name. I just refer to him/her as wiggleworm. I’ll get all the names and details from the director soon via email.

This little girl we call “What’s Up”. I mean, she’s just looking at you like “Hey, what’s up?”. She had just woken up from a nap so she was a little out of it for awhile. She is in post-op care for some minor heart surgery. I think she was Phil’s favorite :)

This little guy (I think he was a boy) is in post-op care for a bi-lateral cleft palate surgery. That is where both sides of the lip are missing, and only a bulb of skin is left in the middle. You can see he’s still healing. He was very happy in his little walker.

There was a teeny, tiny newborn girl! It’s hard to see, but she has a cleft palate.

This little one is also healing from bi-lateral cleft palate surgery. He was napping in his little seat.

Lastly, is a little guy pre-surgery. He has bi-lateral cleft palate, and it’s pretty jarring to see.

As you can see, he can still laugh, although breathing and eating are quite difficult. They have special bottles for cleft palates, and that’s why they come here before surgery for several months – to get healthy and also until they are 5 months old.

I will write more about the home, how it works, the organization, and of course the babies in the separate post. It’s quite an amazing organization!

We went back to the hotel for dinner. Our hotel was actually a Holiday Inn Express. It felt more like hotels at home. Very nice rooms, wifi in the lobby, AND A LAUNDRY ROOM!!! Washing clothes by hand is fine and all, but our pants and some shirts were really starting to stretch out. A dryer sounded heavenly!

Here is the view from our room:

And that’s it for day 11!