Day 9 - June 8, 2007

The list of "firsts" continues - this time with Micah's first fever (101 under his arm as he slept), and Micah's first poo (finally!) followed soon after by his second poo. I won't post a picture of that . . . I didn't take any.

We visited Micah's SWI today. China doesn't really use the word orphanage, they prefer Social Welfare Institute, or SWI. We were concerned about how Micah would respond to being back there. He seemed to do just fine. He did recognize where he was. I can't say exactly how I know that - something about the way his body felt. He got very "alert"when he saw the play area, so we stopped and I let him look as long as he wanted. He never showed any desire to get down and play, though.

Our first stop was to meet the director in her office (wonderful young lady named Ms. Tang). They had a bottle waiting for Micah! The timing was perfect for that. He had refused to eat anything this morning, had a 100 degree fever (down with Tylenol), and it was hot outside as well as in the SWI. When he got a whiff of his good old familiar food, he forgot that he wasn't feeling well and downed the whole thing in no time!

Next, we got to go into the room where he lived before coming to us. There were about 25 beds in the room, arranged in groups of 8, with 3 or 4 nannies. I was able to get pictures of Micah in his old bed, and pictures of him with 2 other little girls whose parents will be heading over in the next couple of months to get them. You can get a feel for the room setup from those pictures. I was not allowed to get general room pictures, so you will just have to imagine what the rest of the room looks like :)




The nannies were all very happy to see him. They swooped down on us the second we were spotted, and then handed him around until everyone had a chance to see him again. It's not as good as having your very own family, but it's the next best thing. I think the best part for Micah was seeing the familiar babies. I have some pictures of him with the two little girls where he is looking right at their faces and reaching out to touch them. The little girl in the crib with him in the picture above did NOT want to see Micah leave. She cried her little eyes out when we walked out the door.

Our next stop for the day was a ceramic market. Foshan, where Micah is from, is known for its ceramics. Shop after shop after shop after shop of ceramics met us when we got out of the van. We were also met with incredible heat, a vicious thunderstorm, and a nice cooling rain. After looking through about 20 shops, we ended up going back and buying one of the first ceramic China-girl figurines that we had seen.

That brings us up to lunch. What did we eat today? That would be Chinese bean curd with brocolli (or is it broccoli?), steamed egg, and crab "things" (I assume they were crab eggs or something similar . . . it's the orange blobs on the bean curd). We also had sweet and sour pork, beans, somekind of vegetable that I've never seen before, salmon rolls, fried rice . . . As always, it was delicious, and I ate myself silly.


Now for the daily required sleep shot - this was when his fever was heading back up into the 101 under his arm range. We just may be staying home tomorrow to let him recoup. Sad, I was looking forward to the zoo.