Day 14 cont. - School

Alice was able to get permission from her old school in Beijing to come in for a visit and see her former classmates. (She told our guide afterwards that the kids treated her better today than when she was a classmmate. Guess having a family and living in America raised their opinion of her.) She told them about her school in America and answered a few questions. Mostly they wanted to know about food.

We brought tiny bags of Jelly Bellies for everyone and US quarters with the different states on them. They interest in the quarters went way up when I told the teacher that all the quarters had a different state. Then the kids quickly started comparing their quarters.

Two classmates took Alice around to find a few more of her teachers.

One last stop to get a group picture with her classmates.

The next stop was to Alice's orphanage. Despite submitting a request to visit weeks ago and our agency following up several times, the best we got (just a few days ago) was permission for an informal visit which was suppose to get us inside the gate, but we were not allowed to go in any buildings because we never got permission from the civil affairs office (rather they never gave us the permission we requested). We got to the gate of the orphanage, but the person we needed to talk to wasn't in and said call another person. That person wasn't at the orphanage yet and then we were told some important government person was visiting. A lady finally came out and talked with Joy. More waiting, more calls and finally the nanny that Alice really wanted to see was able to come out to us. (We never did get inside the gate.) At least Alice got to see the one person from the orphanage that was important to her. She would have liked to visit the other orphanage where they send the kids when they get older. That's where all the kids she knows who've not been adopted live now, but we never got any answer to our request for that.