China Trip 2009 - The adventure begins.....

Would love to know what my little one was thinking as we touched down in "her China" at last. She was soooo excited to be going to her other home...tho we will never know at what level she really understood it. I believe that she understood at a deeply subconscious level that this was "hers" and a very important part of her life.

Our trip this year has been amazing beyond words at so many different levels.

On a personal level it has further cemented our relationship with the land of our daughters birth in an even deeper way, it has deepened our relationships with special friends in China, it has made us feel we "belong" and most importantly these relationships which have taken years to develop have led us to important details about our daughters' early life in China.

In terms of our care for children in orphanages, our Foster care has expanded, and most importantly we now have steps in place to provide more care for our "special children"( more news later).

Our relationship with the GGEF girls has deepened and we now feel able to think more clearly about their needs and how we can help them as they grow and develop opportunities in life.

We have also been thinking about more ways to fundraise to meet the costs of new ventures( anyone with time energy & ideas please get in touch :-).

We will try to capture & share here over the next few weeks some of our photos & stories of our Trip.

This was a Budget Trip - it is so important for us to travel to China but well above our ability to pay - so we were staying in Matthew's apartment instead of our usual hotel, making us real Nanningers ( much to his amusement:-), carrying our very substantial no of suitcases around on public transport instead of our usual personal van & driver.

So arriving in Nanning after 2 long weary days of travel from Scotland, we had one hour to reorganise all the luggage, gifts, donations etc for our visit to Hechi, Desheng, Yizhou....and we were off on a 5hour bus journey. As we all poured out of out taxis with all this luggage, an amazing lady just appeared with an old rickety wheelbarrow & lifted our luggage over to the bus, refusing help from the men!

We settled down to our journey, meeting some new friends along the way....

The beautiful Hechi mountains as we approached.......

On arrival to Hechi City, another amazing form of transport appeared! I really don't know who was most amused - the driver as he watched us pour out of the bus with all our children & all our luggage, or us, as we watched our suitcases loaded onto this bike,

and disappearing into the sunset with this driver.......

Iain & Matthew jumped on an old rickshaw in hot pursuit, jumping off along the way to pick up an escaped suitcase.........

...while we laughed in the back of our taxi, suddenly realising that we didn't know where we were going and that our men & luggage had disppeared without us into the sunset!!!!!!

We were very happy ( and a bit relieved) a few moments later to turn the corner to our old favourite, Hechi City hotel, where we feel quite at home. This is the China we love!!!!!!!

Our children are very good & patient, coping so well with the craziness of the trip, but it had been a long journey...and we were all ready for bed & looking forward to the adventures beginning the next day........