Bai YunQing

Our sweet Quinn YunQing

Guangzhou SWI

outside her bedroom at the orphanage

Chris with Holt that helped Quinn and the older children in China

Quinn was adopted August of 2010. We returned to the orphanage today where she spent part of her life after being abandoned at a bus station as a toddler. The staff at the orphanage were kind to her and gave her the opportunity to be educated and become part of the Journey of Hope program so that she could have a forever family. Half the Sky foundation has been working in the Guangzhou orphanage since 2006 and the baby room has 2 nannies per baby. We were there at feeding time and saw a room full of babies all under one year old. Quinn asked to go to the baby room and has fond memories of helping the little ones as a young girl. She recalls some nights the little ones crying for their moms and told me she would just tell them to call her mama so they would settle down. =( We also saw the little children during preschool with Half the Sky teachers; some of them are waiting for families. They were adorable and the rooms and hallways were decorated with pictures and childrens' drawings. No pictures were allowed. Two new buildings have been built for the intake and medical care of abandoned babies and rehab for those with physical disablities, especially club foot. There are wealthy businessmen in Guangzhou that have helped the orphans by donating the funds to build these buildings and educate some of the kids. With the help of the Half the Sky foundation, these children are well cared for. There goal is to find homes for those they can and nurture those that are "unadoptable". We saw a beautiful, blind girl that Quinn lived with that still has not found a family and another cute, older healthy girl, about 11 yrs old that will be hoping to find a family soon. She was abandoned at age six. Many of the older children here have found homes over the past two years and many of you reading this blog are their families. Some of them have aged out and will help at the orphanage. Thank you all for believing in them and giving them a chance. The life they have there is as good as it can be as an orphan in China- but there is so much more that they all deserve. We had a delicious lunch with one of the administrators and Chris from Holt and spent time in the areas where Quinn lived as a little girl and for three months while waiting for us to come to China in the summer of 2010. She was also fortunate enough to live for four years at the boarding school with other Journey of Hope kids and receive some formal education. I can't imagine my QQ still there wasting away her life and missing out on having a family. As we left, I wondered what was going through her mind.

Link to Holt article her dad wrote while waiting: http://holtinternational.org/blog/2010/07/lines/