Meeting Maggie - Part 6 - Changsha to Guangzhou
Sat., May 29, 1999 - We saw Gertrude and the other folks from International China Concern (ICC) at breakfast and asked her if she would give us a tour of the special needs part of the Changsha orphanage that they were responsible for. We went back to our room to finish packing and wait for her call.
We walked over to the orphanage with Gertrude. On the way over, she explain to us that all the tall buildings that we saw in Changsha had been constructed in the last three to four years (including the Grand Sun City Hotel where we stayed). There is quite a contrast between the big buildings and the small shops that we passed on our walk. Gertrude explained that the shops were privately owned and often the family lived in a room in back or on the second floor.
The Oasis House is a one story building in the same compound as the Changsha orphanage. I believe that Gertrude said that the "adoptable" children (non-special-needs) were kept on the top floor of the orphanage building. We did not go there. She first showed us a large room in the Oasis House where children were watching TV. When Gertrude walked in the room, the children's faces lit up and greetings were exchanged. This was repeated in every room she showed us. She is really a remarkable lady! In addition to Oasis House, ICC has also taken over part of the special needs section in the orphanage. Children here have all kinds of disabilities - mental retardation, Cerebral Palsy, vision and hearing impairments, etc. Each room that we saw was sparkling clean and in good repair. The children seemed to be in relatively good spirits, given their circumstances. I was clear to me that ICC had made a lot of progress there.
We then went back to the hotel. We were to put our bags out in the hall at 11:00. I then tried to feed Maggie some congee before we got on the bus to go to the airport. Our guide Daphne gave a little speech before saying good bye. She told us what a easy group we had been, that she would not forget us, and thanked us for adopting Chinese orphans. (Our guide, Alice, in Guangzhou gave a similar speech and also thanked us for adopting Chinese orphans. They both seemed to want to make it clear that the Chinese people, in general, approved of what we had done.) I'm sure all of us were equally thankful to have the opportunity to become parents to these wonderful babies!
 |
 |
Leaving Changsha and saying goodbye to Daphne were certainly the saddest and most tearful moments of the trip. We hauled all our luggage into the airport and Daphne checked all our bags and got our tickets, boarding passes, and tax coupons for us. We waited there for quite awhile and attracted a lot of attention from the people around us. Erica and I both used the cards that explained in Chinese what we were doing. People would smile and give us the "thumbs up" sign.
Daphne took us to the security area and we said our final goodbyes. After passing through security we had to show our passports and our babies' passports. Once again we had a long wait until our flight took off. We always were taken to the airport way ahead of schedule. I guess CCAI was playing it safe to ensure that there was plenty of time to deal with any problems that might arise. But it made the trips seem much longer when we had to spend so much time waiting in the airport.
Our flight was finally called and we boarded a bus that took us to the airplane. It was crowded and we were all crammed in there like sardines, again. This was Maggie's first airplane flight and she did fine. I managed to get her to drink a little on the take off and landings. However, I am not sure that this is really necessary. There were other times that I could not get her to suck on anything during when we were taking off or landing and she didn't seem to be bothered by it.
Maggie started coming down with a cold by the second day after I got her. By this time she had a pretty bad runny nose and cough. She was a real trooper though and wasn't particularly cranky about it, except that she didn't like us wiping her nose, which we had to do A LOT. I brought three cloth diapers for this purpose and they were heavily used. They were great because they were so thin that I could hand wash them at night and they would be dry by the next day.
Cecilia and I also caught Maggie's cold and we were both coughing by this time. I don't recall feeling bad in Changsha. I didn't write anything about being sick in my journal during that time. The trip from Changsha to Guangzhou really wore me out, though.
It was raining a little when we got to Guangzhou. I put a little hat on Maggie to keep her head from getting wet. I'm not sure if it was the hat, the rain, or both, that she thought was so entertaining, but she was in great spirits. I, on the other hand, was not feeling very perky by this time. Our guide Alice met us at the airport and we boarded a bus which took us to the White Swan hotel.
 |
 |
My experiences in Guangzhou were colored by the fact that I was not feeling well. I did not like the White Swan hotel very much. We did have a lovely room, complete with marble floors in the bathroom and in the small sitting room/bar area and a beautiful view of the Pearl river. But it struck me as being much better suited for a romantic weekend than for taking care of a baby. The crib was much smaller than the one we had in Changsha. There was no room next to the sink for drying hand-washed dishes and the refrigerator and hot pot were all the way on the other side of the room. There was no clothesline for hanging hand-washed clothes like we had in Changsha.
When we got to the room we ordered room service and fed Maggie. Cecilia then took her for a walk while I took a much needed hot bath. The water in Guangzhou was much stinkier and more discolored than the water in Changsha. We were told we could brush our teeth with the water in Changsha, but should not drink it. We didn't brush our teeth in it, anyway, but it certainly seemed fine, where as the water in Guangzhou did not seem fine at all. I gave Maggie her first bath in the bathtub when they got back and she enjoyed it. (In Changsha, I gave her baths in the sink.)
After she went to sleep, I tried to unpack and get the room organized. I was exhausted. I wrote in my journal for the last time that evening. I was too sick after that to write and I guess I didn't have much good to say. I was ready to go home at that point. We also didn't e-mail very much from the White Swan, because the connection to the web was extremely slow. (I had set up a Yahoo account before I left and had been e-mailing a group of family and friends almost daily from the hotel business centers in Hong Kong and Changsha.)