Baby Love and Summer Palace

Author: Samantha S.
Location: Beijing
Today everyone spent the day showing "Baby Love" at the Holy Family Home. We split up into three groups; one group worked with the infants and younger babies, the second group worked with the toddlers, and the third group helped sort and organize donated clothes. We all rotated every hour so we had a chance to do everything. As usual, the kids were adorable! They were all so excited to see so many people moving about the home. When I was working with the toddlers my heart nearly melted when Mae-mae fell asleep in my arms - it was so precious! After helping with the kids, we headed back to the flat for hot dogs and some rest before our excursion. Some people took naps, but about half of us engaged in a rather competitive game of Uno. Who knew cards could be so rough? It was a blast though, with plenty of laughs. At around 2 o'clock Brent and Thomas came by to fill us in on our daily "Sinotoid" and "Sinotruth." Brent shared some background information about the Summer Palace, and then we were off to witness it for ourselves. The palace was enormous and the buildings were fantastic; we couldn't even imagine having a home like that for summer vacations! Most of us tried our luck with steering the paddle boats around the lake, which was great fun. After a few hours, we made our way back to the bus and headed back to the compound for dinner. On the way, Thomas taught us (or attempted to teach us!) Chinese tongue twisters! Once we got back, we all took a walk over to a nearby restaurant and had a delicious Chinese meal. After dinner we returned to the flat for our first Lifeworks forum, where we focused on our goals for the trip and thought about how we will achieve them. Now that the forum is over we all have our cell phones back for a little while so we can call back home (and make everyone a little jealous :-P) before we get to bed.
Flickr Photos from Today
Flickr Photos from this Voyage