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During the women’s gymnastics on Friday night I ate the last tube of these wonderful Orange Ritz from China  We brought 3 packs home with us in March and I have been stringing them out to make them last. But I was getting worried that they would go bad and decided to finish them off while enjoying the Olympics mania going on in our house.

So with round the clock Olympics in our house I have been thinking a lot of China and the stuff that we saw there. We saw a boatload of photos of products with Yao Ming’s face plastered all over them. And this reminded me of when I used to work at a steak house in Dallas when Yao Ming came in with his translator and a couple other basketball people. They were seated in my station because my manager was confident that I wouldn’t act like a goober because a famous person was in my section. She knew I would just do my job.

Anyway, I went up to greet them and he was so tall that even once he was sitting down he was taller than me. I kid you not the guy had to look down a bit to place his order. HA HA!! The best part was when I asked him how he wanted his steak cooked and the translator said, “well done” a split second before he said, “rare.” So I sent it rare and he gave me a big smile and ate the whole thing. I figured he was the one who was going to eat the steak, not the translator.

Who knew that 6 years later we would be in China meeting sweet Nadia and that he would be such a focus of the Olympics?

 

Last night we TIVO’d the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and if you haven’t seen them - try to find it online or see if it’s being replayed. It was totally awesome!!! The sheer numbers of people and props that were put into the ceremony is just mind boggling.

I love all the work the athletes put into their sport. And really one of my favorite things is all the little back stories that they tell that bring me to tears. Like America’s flag bearer being a refugee from the Sudan… now an American and competing for us. Or the little boy who walked along side Yao Ming the flag bearer for China. He was a 9 year old survivor from the May earthquake. 20 of his 30 classmates were killed in the quake. He dug himself out and then went back for 2 other classmates. When asked why he said, “I am a class leader. It was my responsibility.” WOW!! That child’s parents should be proud and how great of China to let him be a part of the opening ceremonies.

Next week our church will be doing an Olympic themed Vacation Bible School. Each year they do a fundraiser for a specific charity that benefits children. Last year the children raised money for a street children’s ministry in India that our church funds. We told the staff all about our visit to New Day Foster Home in Beijing back in March. So this years fundraiser is going to be a contest. The girls will be bringing money for the children of New Day Foster Home and the boys will be bringing money for the persecuted church around the globe.

So each day I am going to give a 5 minute presentation about New Day to the girls. I am going to make a 3 minute video for each day and then talk to the kids for 2 minutes. Here is the first video.

 

Click the photo above to see a slideshow of photos from the school.

As most of you know, we attended Global Chinese Education while in Beijing, so I won’t go into great detail again. They arranged everything for us from airport pick up and drop off to our apartment. They helped get our wireless Internet set up and took us on field trips and out to dinner. They arranged my tutor Kiki to come to the apartment each weekday and so on. I think that we were a new type of customer for them - a family with a small baby.  And a baby adopted from China. Our time there was wonderful and so today’s TT is to share with you a wonderful program they started up a couple days before we left.

Lily from the school and her son joined us on our visit to New Day Foster Home. After going on the tour and speaking with one of the head guys, she went back and told everyone at the school about it. The school then decided to form a relationship with New Day, the first step was to order books for all the children and to arrange for the staff to go and visit New Day. 

One day when I arrived at school to attend my Chinese painting class, Ethan, Lily and Nancy wanted to talk to me. They said that Mike and I had inspired them. They said that our adopting Nadia and our love for the Chinese children who still don’t have parents moved them to want to do something for orphans, and for other adoptive parents. So they launched their new program to offer free tuition to those adoptive parents and families who would like to come to Beijing and do the same kind of thing that we did. Here is the link to it and all the information.

http://www.globalchineseedu.com/china-LanguageAdoption.aspx

I just think that this is so cool!!! Mike and I will definitely be going back to China sometime in the future - once Nadia is a little older, so that she can start on Chinese immersion classes of her own. And I think that a lot of families, who didn’t think they would be able to do what we did, might be able to now. That would be so awesome! To live in the culture where your child came from, even for a brief time is SO valuable. If you attend the school, you will not be in the middle of the touristy areas that you saw when on the adoption trip. You will be able to meet and interact with Chinese people going about their everyday life. And you can experience that life too.

For us it was an adventure, as neither Mike nor I had ever lived in any kind of urban setting. The apartments we lived in when we were first married where 2 levels, not 20 story buildings in the middle of the city. Using public transportation or walking everywhere was new for us too. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

For me it was so valuable to experience China in the time that Nadia was abandoned. Once she gets older and starts to question how and why she became part of our family, I think China is going to be a very different country (not saying that’s good or bad, just different). Capitalist ideas and their opening up to the world for the Olympics is changing China and its people. I am glad that we went now and were able to meet with and talk to people from the country where she was born. She is an American now and will be raised as an American, but we want her to know the language and people of the country where she was born, and therefore I feel this trip and future trips are important.

And if you do go, tell them we sent you