Travel Journal - Half the Sky

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This is an unedited email account of our four members traveling to China to volunteer for Half the Sky.  Thank you Sue Go, Faye Taam, Arleen Kwan, and Gayle Chan.

Greeting from Changchun, China

Sunday, May 09, 2010 5:30 AM

Hi Everyone,

Greeting from Changchun, China.  Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers.

We also arrived to China safety.  We arrived on Friday afternoon to Beijing and today (Sunday) we took an early flight (1-1/2 hours) to Changchun.  We spend ALL day Saturday....shopping in Beijing!!

Tonight, after a delicious 11+ courses meal, we are all ready and eager to work in the morning.  The orphanage is about 45 minutes from our hotel.  We will leave our hotel around 8:00am and to return back to the hotel for dinner around 6:00pm.  We have NO ideas what to expect, but will let you all know later.  We all are very excited about helping.

Andrew, glad that you arrived safely to China also.  Hope AFS could accommodate ALL the children that needed the surgery eventually!

Best,

Gayle, Faye,, Arleen and Sugo

Having a great time in Changchun  (Tuesday 5/11/2010)

Hi All,

We went to visit Changchun Child Welfare Institute and was greeted by their whole staff.  We visited with some of the orphanages there.  We were all very moved when we arrived there.  We saw babies from infant to age 14.  Most of the children there appeared to be special needs children.  We were able to carry some of the children.
The Institute was very large with many rooms on 4 floors.  The rooms were decorated with colorful and cheerful pictures.  The equipments there for the children for their size.  It was very pleasant for the children there.
We have to say that all the children were well fed.  They were cute and chubby.  They were very clean.  The regular children were at school.  We haven't met them yet.
The food there was very good.  We attended some training programs given by Half the Sky to potential care givers.  After the training session was a few hours of work.  We sanded 50 tables and painted first coat.  I taped rooms for painting.
The next day was a full working day.  I continued taping walls for painting while the others painted 100 chairs.  Tomorrow will be painting the second coat and painting the walls of the rooms.  It was hard work, but fun. 
The friendships of the volunteers is wonderful.   We have to go to dinner now.  We are going to a hot pot restaurant.  We will continue our journey later.

More to come later,
The Four Rotarians

Greeting from Changchun, China Friday 5/14/2010

Hello Everyone, Sorry for not writing until now.  I have been so tired each nights.  By the time I get back from our dinner at night, all I wanted to do is to shower and then go to sleep! On a daily basis, we (my roommate Faye Taam and I) normally get up around 4:00am, get ready and have breakfast at 6:00am.  Our bus then leave at 8:00am from our hotel.  The ride to the orphanage is about 45 minutes. We work until about 12:00 noon to have lunch.  The orphanage closes at 4:30pm and all of us have to leave and head back to the hotel.  Some nights, we eat at the hotel, some nights we walk to the neighborhood restaurants and other nights we would drive to special restaurants to have specialty meals.  We normally preferred to eat at the hotel or neighborhood restaurants because we all are exhausted from working all day.  Tonight we will attend a banquet in a restaurant given by the Institute in our honor for helping them.  We are all excited about that There are a total of 11 volunteers ( 4 from our rotary, 1 Korean young man from Chicago, one mother and an 10 years old adopted child from Oregon, 2 mothers from the Bay area, 1 mother from Chicago and 1 mother from Florida).  All the mothers have adopted children from China except one and wanted to come here to help out.  All the mothers are Caucasians except for one Chinese mother from the Bay area. Also, there are 4 staffs from HTS Foundation in China and 7 staffs from HTS Foundation from US.  We all get along very well. The Changchun Child Welfare Institute was established in 2007.  This "E" shaped building has 4 levels.  It provides medical treatments, rehabilitation and special educations for all the children. They services about 250 children.  150 children stay at the institute and 100 children are in the "family village" foster care.  They go home at night to there foster family's home.  Some are waiting for international and domestic adoptions. Most of them are with some sort of "disabilities".  We found that all the staffs and nannies are very, very patience and loving with the children. Today is Friday morning (7:00am) and hopefully it is our last day of work.  The works that we needed to do for the orph anage are painting of 100 chairs (in 4 different colors), 52 tables (in 2 colors), painting and preparing 3 large play rooms on 3 different levels, putting together about 50-60 bicycles, wagons, tricyles, etc (donated by "Radio Flyer" - that was so nice of them!).  The chairs needed 2 coats of paints and the tables needed 3 coats of paints.  Because we have to use oil paints, we had to do it outdoor because of the strong fumes.  The first few days, the weather was very cold, and we had to put on every piece of clothings we have.  But the last two days, the weather was so hot, that I am on sleeveless shirt!  Today, it is another beautiful day!  We also had to sand in between each painting so that all the surfaces are smooth to the touch!  If we get all the work done by the end of the day, we will get to do some sightseeing tomorrow. There is a banquet dinner tonight hosted by the Institute.  There is a celebration on Sunday lunch time at the orphanage and all the children will be dress in costumes!  We will fly back to Beijing Sunday evening.  I heard that there's another party planned for Monday lunch at the HTS headquarter at Beijing. We all are enjoying this build and grateful for the opportunities to help out all these sweet and beautiful children!  This is an eye opening experiences for all of us and all are hoping to come back for future builds! Hopefully we will write soon!  Take care. Regards, Gayle and the Girls Greeting from Changchun, China Sunday, 5/16/2010 Hello everyone, It is Sunday morning now -7:30am.  Because we finished ALL our works on Friday (in fact, we finished it way too early ... around 2:00pm, the afternoon seems SO long!), we got to go sightseeing yesterday.  We woke up in morning and it was raining ... of all days, on the only day that we could do sightseeing!!   But by the time we left at 11:00am, the rain stopped. We visited the Imperial Palace Museum in Changchun. These grounds used to be the palace of Puyi, the last Emperor of the Qing Dynasty and the Emperor of the Puppet State "Manchukuo" and has now become a museum. He stayed in the palace for about 9 years while he was controlled by the Japanese.  That was a  sad period for all Chinese.  After that, we even had  time to do a little shopping in a local market. On Friday night, we had a great dinner banquet hosted by the Welfare Institute at this amazing place inside a garden!  We had about 5 tables with the HTS founder, Jenny Bowen as the guest of honor, all the educators and trainers from HTS, all the teachers, staff from the institute, and us ... the volunteers.  We were serviced ... must be over 15 dishes and were entertained by the director of the institute, his staff and HTS staff with singing and dancing!  It seems like all Chinese people in China like to sing!   It was a fun and enjoyable evening. After being here for almost a week, I now have a little better understanding of the partnership between HTS Foundation and the Chinese government.  Carol, the HTS director of development puts it like this, "the Chinese government provided the hardwares and HTS provided the softwares" for the orphanage.  What it means is that the Chinese government have the building that houses the orphaned children and HTS will hire, train and pay salary for all the teachers, nannies and caretakers to care for the children.  HTS also has a full time carpeter that could do some minor repairs at some of the orphanage.  HTS have some amazing teachers, trainers, educators and physical therapist that works with children with special needs!.  They are from all over the world - Spain, China, US.  They are so dedicated in improving the lives of these children!!! We stayed at 5 stars hotels ... in Beijing - The New Otani Hotel (two blocks from the HTS headquarter) and in Changchun - Shangri-La Hotel 45 minutes from the orphanage.  Both hotel are very, very nice.  The breakfasts were amazing.  I think I must have gained 10 lbs just by eating their breakfasts this past week. While we were at the orphanage, they wanted to feed us morning and afternoon breaks with coffee, tea, cookies and pastries and a huge lunch consists of at least 3 vegetable dishes, 2 meat dishes, rice, soup, desserts, and homemade pot stickers everyday!  We were eating way too much food!  We finally had to tell them to STOP feeding us cookies and pastries at break times.  All their staff were so nice.  This morning, we will be going back to the Institute to attend a party. All the rooms that we painted will have all the new tables, chairs and toys there for the children.  The children will all be in costumes.  We all are looking forward to that this morning! We will be taking the 5:30pm flight back to Beijing.  There will be also be a lunch celebration at the HTS headquarter on Monday.  Most of the people will be leaving and going back home on Tuesday.  Faye Taam and I will be staying for two extra days in Beijing before heading back home on Thursday  ... two days of shopping! Bill was sweet and got me a small "Eee PC" computer for the trip.  I had to learn how to use it the night before I leave!  It was so convienent to be connect with friends and family at home. Both hotels have been wonderful and did not charge us for internet fee at all because we were working for HTS.  I have both emails and skype access.  Both Faye and I have been calling home to check up on our family. Take care and will write again. Regards, Gayle and the Girls