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Published: September 18th 2010
Greetings All!
Yesterday we traveled a couple hours by bus with our adoptive travel group to visit the Shaolin Temple. It was definitely more commercialized than we expected but still a fascinating place. Sweet baby Julia continues to be an amazingly well regulated and content baby. She cries only briefly when she is hungry or upset about being left for a moment but quickly returns to her even-tempered happy disposition. The trip yesterday was exhausting for all the families by the end of the long day and Julia was the one baby still plugging happily along.
She continues to bond well, smiling even more often and enjoying our comforting in a variety of situations ranging from stressful to relaxed. She is particularly happy and playful as I write this post this morning.
Thanks for everyone well-wishes. Today is a big day in that we make an important trip to Anyang City, the location of Julia’s orphanage. This can be a tumultuous experience for the adoptive baby as well as the adoptive family and we ask for your prayers for a smooth and meaningful Grace-filled day. It may seem strange to go
back to the orphanage just a few days
Baby Julia in the back pack.
She LOVES the baby back pack.after the adoption but, for many families, in hindsight this excursion is often considered the most meaningful side trip of the adoptive process in China. It allows the adoptive family a chance to document for the adopted child the place of her own personal prehistoric origin. We can’t know much more about her early life any earlier than this. As these children grow older in adulthood, there is a normal, healthy, justified yearning for any meaningful information about their origin and this trip by their adoptive family is the one solid chance we have at documenting the place, people, and setting of her early life. Some families return to China years later to visit the orphanage with the adopted child around the late elementary school age range when they can make their own impressions and remember the place for themselves. However, given how fast China is changing now, it is becoming increasingly common that these later trips are stymied when the family discovers that the orphanage has been demolished or moved, or at the very least, is very different from the time that the child was there.
So, the trip today to Anyang City is literally a “once in
a lifetime” opportunity for all of us to become the living memory book of Julia’s early life as best we can manage in a brief day-visit. All seven of us will travel the 2.5 hrs by bus with a personal guide to this orphanage and we will take pictures, take videos, and mostly just try to lay down memories in our own minds so as to give Julia our impressions of this place later in her life the when time comes.
Thanks for your prayers and thoughts!
JC
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Paige
non-member comment
What is up with that camel on the bridge in that picture of Joshua? Is it fake or are it's legs hidden?