Bus rides and energy galore!!

Author: Callie
Location: Beijing
We arrived home to Beijing yesterday exhausted from our trip to Xi'an, and we got right back up for our big 8 hour road trip to Shanxi province wth the kids from the group home. They're here to see the orphanage they had lived in up to about 3 years ago. We're going to be veryy busy here with all of the volunteering and touring and driving! The drive was a blast! All 43 of us piled into a greyhound style tour bus! Los of coloring, bracelet making, mazes, remote controlled cars and goofing around. Though is is sometimes hard to communicate with the younger kids, a lot of us had a good experience talking to the older ones whose English is super impressive! We at PJandJ on the bus for lunch while being gawked at by some local townies (these parts see very few people from North America). Caroline and many others loved the scenery and views of rural China, which we definitely hadn't gotten to see yet. Little villages carved into the hillsides, rows upon rows of corn and tomatoes and beans - we were so lucky to have a blue clear sky, especially since Shanxi is known as the most polluted province. Many of the children in the China Care home in Tiayuan (the city we're staying in) have deformities that are said to be caused by the severe polluted air. We settled into our apartment/hotel in Tiayuan which is in the same compound as the China Care homes. We visited the babies and then after dinner went to the nearby huuuge super store where we stocked up on more snakcs and lots of yummy fruit! Forum was great because we talked more specifically about the children we're spending time with and lots of us had really interesting thoughts about the kids and their situation. Unfortunately a few of us are still feeling sick so we are looking forward to a good nights sleep!

Words from China,
Callie