CHINA - XIAN

My last day proved to be a busy one. Apart from setting up the rooms in the new volunteer apartment in the morning & spending as much time as possible with the babies (well alright, mostly Julia) we went to the city orphanage in the afternoon. Apparently foreigners had been banned because of the swine flu but somehow - due to Amanda - we were allowed in. We brought 9 babies home!!!! It was only supposed to be 7 but there were 9 of us filling up 3 taxi's so if we could save two more, well why not? A baby each seemed to make sense. The hard part is choosing who to take home. Amanda had told me days before that it's one of the hardest things to do - it's almost as if you are choosing who lives & who dies. But you can't let that stop you. On one of the walls in the foster home someone has painted the Starfish motto "To this one, I will make a difference." That's what you have to focus on. What you can do to help change the life of that one (or nine in our case) baby, not the ones you can't. Otherwise the guilt could stop you from helping any of them.

In some ways the orphanage staff told us which babies to take but we could also choose as well. Amanda looks to take cleft & heart babies & the ones that look the sickest as they have the least chance of survival in the orphanage. They also have an unofficial "dying room" where babies are essentially left to die (hence the name). How accurate that is I'm not sure but my understanding is that the decision has been made that enough money has been spent on those ones. There were 4 in that room & Amanda managed to convince them to let her take one. When I asked why we couldn't take all four she told me it was because they were embarrased!

So the babies were photographed, had clean nappies & clothes put on them that we had brought with us & we piled back into the taxi's. The drivers seemed speechless - I'm sure it would make an interesting story at home for them that night. We gave each of them a bottle in the taxi on the way back & I am pleased to say that my little tike was the only one to finish the whole 4 ounces.

When I picked up my baby I thought it was a girl but it wasn't until we changed them that I found out it was a boy. They dress them in anything at the orphanage so you really can't tell. Michael was sure his baby was a boy & it wasn't until we got back home that he found out it was a girl (which was a good thing as he was going to call him Derek if it was a boy). I called my baby Joshua after my Godson & from the rest of the group we have Caroline, Katherine, River, Cameron, Matilda (named by a new Aussie volunteer), Jessica & Olivia. The 9th baby will be named by the person whose donation made bringing the 9 babies home possible. All in all a much better bunch of names than last time - personal opinion of course. As you can imagine there is the odd one that I'm not that keen on & a few close calls as far as I was concerned when names were being thrown around but generally I think they are pretty good.