Visiting Hudson's orphanage and foster home

Hello! from Logan, Hudson, and Bart in Guangzhou, China.

Yesterday (Wednesday) we picked up the Chinese adoption decree which officially recognizes Hudson Andrew Taylor as our son. Very cool!

Afterward, we went out with 4 other families to a nice Chinese restaurant on Shamian island. Our guide “Connie” ordered a sample of favorite dishes for us to share as sat around 6 foot diameter tables with a 4 foot turntable in the middle. Our first dish was roasted pigeon. Hudson and the other boys (age 12 and 10) from his foster home got really excited when they saw it. Logan was pretty excited, too. The rest of us were much more reserved. For those that are curious, it has very dark meat and it tasted like chicken. The platter also had several pigeon heads. I thought that perhaps this was for visual effect, but the boys, including Hudson, showed us all that the heads can be eaten as well. (Look closely at Hudson’s right hand). The rest of the dishes were pork, chicken, beef, and rice. Everybody was stuffed, and our share was about $20 for the three of us.

Today (Thursday) Hudson, Logan, and I along with two other families that are adopting children from the Longgang orphanage rode about 2 ½ hours to Shenzhen city to visit the orphanage that Hudson was brought to after he was found in a hospital in 2004. We also were allowed to visit the “foster home” that Hudson lived in for the past two years. I was allowed to look at (but not keep) his official orphanage file, including the details of when he was first found and his first picture. We’ve never seen this file in any for our previous adoptions, so that was pretty cool.

We had a good tour of the orphanage, a very large, clean, 4 story facility that was built around 5 years ago. The staff was very nice. One very nice social worker (Shera) spoke English pretty well and explained that she had set up online accounts for each of the three older boys and uploaded a lot pictures of picture of them. She gave us her email address and asked us to keep in touch.

We then headed about a half mile away to the “foster home” where 12 older kids from the orphanage live and go to school. It’s a sparse 3 story building with an eating/living area downstairs, 3 small bedrooms (four per room) on the second floor, and sleeping areas for the staff on the top floor. Hudson showed me where he slept on the top bunk.

The kids are cared for by an “uncle” and two “aunts.” They all work in the home during the day and take turns staying in the home at night. I counted 12 kids, so apparently 3 lucky kids had already moved in to take the place of Hudson and his two friends that were adopted this week. They seemed very nice and everybody, including the caretakers and all of the kids, seemed to be very excited to see the 3 boys coming back for a visit with their new families. We had a surprise celebratory cake. One of the other kids (Long Xiao Xiong) in our adoption group somehow had saved money for the cake and asked one of the aunts to buy for our visit; amazingly generous.

I wondered what Hudson was thinking as he went back to the orphanage and foster home and said goodbye to the only life he could remember. But, he seemed to be in a really good mood all day. There really hasn’t been any sign of homesickness yet. But I have no doubt that it going to come at some point.

But for now we’re all having a fun time getting to know each other and looking forward to Hudson meeting his new Mommy and sisters tomorrow night when they fly here to Guangzhou from Nanjing and we move into the second week of the trip.