Friday, June 22, 2007

“I believe in God's master plan in our lives. He moves people in and out of each other's lives, and each leaves his mark on the other. You find you are made up of bits and pieces of all who ever touched your life, and you are more because of it, and you would be less if they had not touched you.” ~ Unknown

Today is our last day in Changsha. It’s a bittersweet day. As happy as I am to be getting closer to bringing Jenna home, I really do feel like Daphne is a part of our family now. It’s hard to leave. It’s amazing how quickly you can become so close to someone (someone who was a complete stranger 5 days ago) on this trip. The bonding during this journey is amazing. Daphne will always have an incredibly special place in our hearts, and I truly believe she will always have a special place in her heart for each of the girls and the families she has helped to forever change.

As I was getting off the elevator with Jenna today, an Asian lady smiled at me, gave me a “thumbs up” signal and said, “Lucky Baby”. That happens a lot, and it’s always very nice to get a positive reaction from the people that live here in China. What they don’t know, though, is I am the lucky one. Hopefully their lives are better with us—surely it is better to be part of a family than to grow up in an orphanage—but we are the ones who are truly blessed. Our lives are enriched thousands of times more than anything we could ever do for them. I tell my girls every night that I’m the luckiest Mommy in the whole wide world….and without a doubt, I am.

This afternoon we flew to Guangzhou, the home of the American Consulate. But more special to me, it’s the city where Madison was placed in our arms and joined our family three years ago. (How awesome that we get to revisit BOTH cities where we received our daughters!)

I knew Daphne would give another moving speech on the way to the airport, so this time I made sure Grandad had the video camera poised and ready to go. As expected, she did. This is what she said…

“I’m going to sing a song for the babies and big sisters. The name of the song is “Little Swallow” - A little swallow dressing beautiful in tuxedos. She comes here every year in spring. If you ask her why, she will answer you, “Because this is my home city. This is the most beautiful place in the world.” This is a very popular Chinese children’s song.

The second song is for all the parents, grandma, grandpa, and cousins. It is a Hunan Folk Song. It is very popular among Chinese people because Chairman Mao was born in Hunan. His home city is a two-hour drive south of Changsha. The Xiang River, the largest river in Hunan Province, runs south to north by Chairman Mao’s home city. The song is about the river and how grateful the Chinese people are that Chairman Mao was born here. It was popular among my grandparents’ and parents’ generation.

Thank you for coming here. It is my pleasure and honor to meet you on this trip. I enjoyed you so much. You treat me not only as your facilitator, but also as your friend, and I’m really impressed by the great love and care you are giving our babies and the big sisters.

It is hard to say goodbye because goodbye is that. But I know they are going to have a much better and brighter future – so do the staff from the orphanage – they know this is the best for them. I wish all the babies grow up to be a very self confident, smart, beautiful, Chinese-American lady. And bring big joy to your family and everybody that you love and care for. Because of you coming on this trip, now you become the bridge of the two countries bringing the people of the two countries much closer. And I think people always heard different stories through the media which is not true. To us, we watch too much western movies of the United States – when we talk about the United States, we think about cowboys and those action movies. But I think to American people, Chinese life sounds a little bit strange, but actually when you came you understand that mostly people are the same everywhere. We love our children, we love families. I think since you came on this trip you have a much better understanding of how China looks like. We are always looking for a bright future even though now our material life is still far behind what you have in the USA -- especially we need a much purer sky with less pollution, but we’re working hard on this. We have nice people and people are very optimistic and always looking for a bright future. We are hard-working people and I think there is no doubt that China is even better in the future, so I’m sure when the girls grow up and come back for a visit, they will not be disappointed. Both China and the USA are great countries. We both have rich cultures, great history, great people so I think those are the same we should share.