Our Travel Journal: Orphanage visit

Today was the day for us to go to Luoyang, where Leah was born, about a two-hour drive east from Zhengzhou.

On the way, Leah told our driver, Mr. Lee, that she was happy every day to have new clothes.

The freeway was actually pretty similar to ours. The speed limit for cars was 120 km/hr, trucks 90 km/hr, and the “lowest speed” was posted at 60 km/hr. There were surveillance cameras everywhere, and I spotted one photo radar camera on a tripod in the median bushes.
All of the signs were the standard green like we have in the U.S., with Chinese and English underneath. The English frequently had misspellings and some entertaining directions, such as “climbing line,” “exceed breadth the vehicle,” “forbid the line,” and “enterance.”

One of the most interesting things were the workers about every kilometer or so who were sweeping the shoulder with straw brooms. We’d seen this in the city, but they were on the freeway almost all of the way to Luoyang as well. It appears that they ride their bicycles to wherever they are sweeping.

We saw the cooling towers of several nuclear power plants.

Gas was 5.07 Yuan per liter, which - if I converted right - was about $2.81 per gallon.

Luoyang is the “City of Peonies” and is home to a famous peony festival every spring. We stopped at a shop that Mr. Lee was familiar with that carried peony art and were able to find some keepsakes from Leah’s city to take home with us.

Then we spent a couple of hours touring the Longmen Grottos which date back thousands of years.

After lunch at McDonald’s, Mr. Lee took us to possible “Finding Places” for Leah. The documents from the orphanage state that she was “found abandoned beside the Chunqing Road of Luoyong Bus Station." We found Chunqin Road, which was about a block from a bus station of a different name, and a couple blocks from the Luoyang Bus Station. So, she could have been found at any of the three places, but Wen Ling felt from reading the original Chinese that it was most likely along Chunqin Road. It was emotional seeing the place where Leah was likely left.

Then we went to the orphanage and met the assistant head-mistress, and later the head-master, Mr. Pei. We exchanged gifts, and they gave us a photo album with pictures of Leah and several beautiful scrolls with Chinese writing and peonies.

We were able to have a tour of Leah’s classroom and a classroom next door. She knew where to take us and she was excited to hand out candy to her friends and say goodbye to her teachers. She had been nervous when we arrived, even though we had explained in English and Wen Ling had explained in Chinese what was happening, that we were going back to the orphanage so that she could say goodbye to her friends and teachers, and that she was part of our family now. She did great and waved goodbye when we left.

Then it was off to the notary office to notarize documents. It was about 20 minutes of filling out forms, and at least 45 minutes of watching two officials meticulously sort, stack, glue, and stamp at least twelve packets of documents.

Everyone was worn out and slept on the way home, except Leah (and me, since I was sitting next to her.) This is a child who apparently doesn’t need to nap.

The boys and Leah were VERY good with all the driving and waiting that went on today, and we promised them ice cream, but we couldn’t find any in Luoyang and it was too late by the time we got back to Zhengzhou. We decided to wait until the next day, and we went to bed.