09/13 Closing a chapter... opening a Whole New Book!

Today was such an awesome day I can hardly believe it! It exceeded my expectations beyond belief!
We left the hotel with Jacky this morning to head for Yueyang, Esther's hometown. We arrived around 11:00 am to her SWI (orphanage). There are two parts to her SWI... a new building and an older building... the older building is where she lived. There is a locked gate across the alley between the two buildings. Her home is the typical Chinese courtyard style housing, two stories high, courtyard in the middle (for those parents with children here perhaps the first picture you saw of your child was on or near a round stone planter with a tree in the middle... this is in the center of this courtyard [Charis, Jeremy]). The children live upstairs and the elderly residents live down stairs, like our assisted living situations. The SWI often house the elderly and children in the same facility. Across the alley is the new building. The offices of the Director, Assistant Director etc. are in this building. The babies are in this building on one of the floors. I believe as the children reach school age they move to the older building and go to public school. While babies, they attend preschool in the new building on the 5th floor. There were only 10 children in Esther's Orphanage on the older side of the SWI. I am not completely certain on this, but I think the children mostly get adopted as babies and never move across the alley way to the older section. Therefore only a few are there but many more babies in the new building.
We toured her entire facility, we were free to go anywhere, take pictures, film, ask any questions. I even asked to see the bathroom. While we were touring the 8 or 9 children came home from school for lunch (Esther says it's about a 10 minute walk). They eat downstairs in the dining room at the "bottom" of the "U" shaped facility. We followed to take more pictures of the two children we brought gifts for, Charis and Jeremy. Their parents in the US have been in contact with us and asked us to deliver these gifts to them.
Then we went back out to the courtyard to give the gifts to the Asst. Director, clothing and quilts for the children. Jacky explained for us that we had a quilt that a dear friend at home made for Esther along with a special fabric pen for all of them to sign a message to Esther. They were a little shy to do this in front of everyone (this is not the Chinese way) but one by one they signed her quilt and wrote something to her, we will have to get it translated.
We then asked for Charis and Jeremy to come and open their gifts from there families so we could get photos to send home. They did, but they wanted them to pose with the unopened gift, I asked ,please can we open it and let them see what is inside so their families can see their reaction. So we did. It just isn't the custom to open gifts in front of the giver like it is for Americans.
Months before we came to China we had sent a blanket to Esther, that we had cut in half. We brought the other half with us for her to give the closest person in her life so that she would know every time she held her blanket that that person held the other half. We gave it to her at this point and she took it directly to Jeremy! He is her closest friend, I thought you would like to know that Mary and family.
It was about 1:00 and Jacky suggested we go to lunch and then come back to see the Director, he was not available at the moment to join us. We went to a restaurant that was probably the fanciest local restaurant we have been to yet. I'm not sure what position in the SWI all the ladies hold but there were 4 of them, one being the Assistant Director, also Quang, the young man who wrote the poem in Chinese for Esther, Jacky, the driver, and us. They ordered everything and we even had mooncakes for dessert. (mooncakes are on sale EVERYWHERE this time of year, they are even going door to door in our hotel! If you can believe that!) The total bill was about $65.00.
During lunch we were able to ask any questions about Esther that we wanted to. We asked a few questions, but honestly she is so easy going we don't have any major questions. We asked if they had any questions for us. They wanted to know what time we would be putting her to bed and getting her up everyday and they wanted to know to who would take care of her if she didn't start school right away. I asked if it would be possible to get something from when she was a baby preferably a photo or even a copy of a photo or maybe a drawing she did as a toddler. Jacky said we will see.
Then some of the ladies departed and went back to the SWI by taxi, some stayed with us and Quang stayed to show us the way to the Elementary School Esther attended. When we arrived at her school the children were back from their lunch break (they all go home for lunch for about 2 1/2 hours) but class was not in session yet. We drove into the school yard and Esther took one of the ladies by the hand straight to her teacher's office, we followed filming her and taking pictures. Her teacher was not back from lunch yet so she took us to her classroom. All the while throngs of children are following us. We entered her room and she showed us her desk, by this time hundreds of children are in her room yelling and excited to see us, saying Hello!, Hello! We go back downstairs to head for the van. We are surrounded by children screaming and yelling Hi!, Hello! they are very excited to see us. But we could not move! Then as each one of us were surrounded, they started to push each other and the little ones were getting shoved around. It was pandemonium! We made our way to the van which was surrounded also. Jacky said school would start in about 20-25 minutes if we wanted to wait then they would all be in their classes and we could walk through to her room for a visit with her teacher. We said yes we would wait in the air conditioned van. We sat looking out at hundreds of little faces looking in at us through the windows. Soon her teacher arrived at the van. She and Jacky spoke and he said they are going to ring the bell early and get the children in their classes. Soon after the bell rang we could get out of the van and go to her room. (Now I have an idea how celebrities feel!)
This time in her class it was completely different... the children were seated at their desks with hands folded. Get this... there are 66 students in her class! One teacher! What do you think about that Mrs. Robertson?
We had teddy bears to give them but not enough! Jacky suggested having them ask questions, sing a song, recite a poem or dance or something for the bears. We did that for awhile and then we let Esther give them to whoever she wanted to. Jacky asked us to teach them some English so we sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the ABC song. Four children in her class are from her SWI, we made sure they each got a bear.
After our visit with Esther's class we headed back to the SWI to meet with the Director. We went to the third floor of the new building. We sat down and the 4 ladies we had lunch with came in with the Director. They brought a binder in, about 2 inches thick. Esther's photo at an earlier age was on the spine of the binder. The Assistant Director, Mrs. Chang began to speak, Jacky interpreted and handed me the binder. I couldn't believe they were going to let me look through all the reports, photos and drawings my little girl had done in her life... then Jacky said to me, "They are going to let you keep this, it is for you". I burst into tears! I could hardly control my emotions! (I am having a hard time not crying now as I write the account of what happened.) This is unheard of. We were not getting a copy... we were getting her file! The original! Jacky kept saying, "Easy, easy, it's alright". But I was overwhelmed! This was so much more than I had hoped for, how could I be hearing correctly? It is not the Chinese way to cry in front of others; I imagine I made them uncomfortable for awhile, but I am not Chinese... I got it together and properly thanked them and told them they have no idea what this means to us and how important it is to Esther's life. They said it was more important for her to have it then for them to keep it, it was her life.
They took the binder and made copies for them to keep and returned it to us. I wonder if it was not the original plan to let us keep it, because if it was the plan they would have already made copies before we got there. Who knows?? I asked Jacky later if he had ever heard of this happening before? He said no, in the five years that he has been doing this usually people get a copy of a photo or something like that, never the original and never the whole file. We are blessed. We found the Yueyang City SWI to be nothing but open and hospitable towards us. We were delighted with all we were able to learn about Esther's life before she was a Walker.
The Director then had an opportunity to say a few words to us and sign Esther's quilt. Then we visited the fifth floor where Esther attended preschool. There were about 10 children sitting down for snack time. We took a few photos and headed downstairs.
Mrs. Chang and one other lady joined us to go to the "finding place" for Esther. It was a very small dock on the second largest lake in China. I had pictured a much larger dock but it was very small and a ferry boat was there loading people. The people boarded the boat from a plank slanted from the boat to the dock. Out in the lake there are many large cargo ships; it must be a very large lake. The people on the ferry, according to Jacky, were heading for the Hubei Province, North of Hunan. We took many photos of Esther. I doubt she had any idea of the significance of the spot. The dock (which I would not refer to as a dock, I would call it a boat ramp) is in a very poor area. We only can guess, but we discussed with Jacky that it probably was a local person there in that area who left Esther, because he said seven years ago it was much different then now and they would not have easily been able to travel to this spot.
We drove back to the SWI to return Mrs. Chang and the other lady. The children were returning from school as we drove up so we were able to get more photos of them with their back packs, so cute! For mementos we picked up a few rocks from the grounds of the courtyard and Mrs. Chang came from her office with two copies of the local Yueyang newspaper, it is very thin, something like you may see in a high school in the U.S.
It was time for us to go... we had a WONDERFUL day!!!
But more wonderful things lay ahead...
I mentioned that Esther had been much more comfortable with Jacky in the last couple of days. Well, she sat on Jacky's lap on the way back to Changsha. And began to talk up a storm with him... she asked many significant questions and revealed many important things. I can't remember them all because she talked non-stop for almost 2 hours on the way back.
The most important was, she asked through Jacky why we had abandoned her and what took us so long to come back and get her? We explained that we are not her birth parents and we would never abandon her and we do not know who her parents are, but we would try to find them together. That was really a surprise to us that somehow she had believed that we were her birth parents. No wonder she so freely accepted us on Gotcha Day. She then relayed a story that she believes she remembers from the age of one, about being placed on a bus by a man and him paying her fare and telling her to stay on the bus. Then someone else taking her off the bus after a long ride...she did not want to go with this person because she had been told to stay on the bus. This is probably something she has made up in her mind or confused with something she has heard because we know she was abandoned and found on the same day she was born.
Then she said to us that she would try and study very hard to get all A's. We said , Oh good honey... but then she added... she and the other children in the orphanage (that knew they were going home soon to be with their "foreign" parents) talked together often about what their lives would be like. Someone, probably a child at school, told them that foreign parents beat their children on their hands if they do not get all A's...and put them outside the house until they do better. Our hearts just sank with this statement... we assured her that that would never happen and Baba said to her, "Baba would hurt anyone who tried to hurt his Esther". She looked at Baba and smiled. After reflecting on this I was so amazed that Esther's attitude with us has been so wonderful... for four days she has been with us believing that this was what was in store for her if she was not a good student! She willingly and happily went with a family that she believed may mistreat her! I was so grateful that she opened up with Jacky... we would have never known! She would have been carrying this load all on her own. It scares me to think what else may be in her thoughts that we have no idea about...
I asked if the photo album of her family I had sent was helpful to her... she said yes... I asked how often she looked at the photos... she said at least every other day... I felt so good about that... then she added "because there was a dog in the pictures"... oh... thanks... I teased her about loving the dog more than Mama?! We told her all about our dog Milly. Esther is very excited to meet Milly. I know that in general, orphans specifically are afraid of dogs or pets... they are not exposed to them really. So I assured her that Milly's favorite thing to do is lay on your lap, get petted and fall asleep. She also likes to play fetch. Esther was very excited about this... I don't think there will be a problem with fear of Milly when we get home.