A Visit to Tangshen

The drive to Tangshen can be about 3 hours long, so we had to get up at 6am. I was afraid I wouldn't wake up, so we had a wake up call scheduled and I also set the alarm on my phone. I was already half awake when the phone rang, so I guess no need to worry!
We got up and got ready and went downstairs to the buffet for breakfast. It was Lydia's dream come true...noodles, dumplings, and rice for breakfast! They also had more "Western" breakfast foods like eggs, bacon (labeled baconic), hash browns, and juice. I opted for the regular breakfast, but Lydia had all Chinese food.
After breakfast, we finished getting ready and met our guide in the lobby of our hotel. We headed into the Beijing rush hour traffic. It is pretty crazy. I'm not sure how they tell when it's their turn to go, especially the people on bikes and mopeds, but we didn't see any crashes, so there must be some rhyme or reason to how they decide to go. One thing we noticed while driving through town was a coat like blanket that they put over the front of them and their moped to keep themselves warm. Almost everyone had them. It was in the 40s (I think) so they were feeling cold. For many people the only personal transportation they own is their bike or moped, so they have to drive them rain or shine.
We fought our way through the city center and eventually got to the place where there wasn't too much traffic.  We drove for about 2 hours along a highway that went through more rural areas.
We arrived in Tangshen a little after 10am and made our way to the Tangshen orphanage.

Here's Lydia's version of that visit:
For breakfast I ate rice,dumplings, yogurt, noodles, and apple juice. In the orphanage I got a giant hippo stuffed animal and an apple made from giant beads! I met my orphanage directer and she told me the kids made the apple. She showed us a mural on one of the walls with pictures of the me when I was a baby. Then she took us to some kids from the orphanage and I give each kid one handful of Jelly Bellies. She also took me to the room I slept in when I was there.

Erica fell asleep and Lydia is done now so I (Brian):
It was nice to be able to see the orphanage again.  I recognized a couple of people from before.  Unfortunately we did not get to see either of the nannies we met last time that worked with Lydia.  One had the day off and the other has retired.  Most of the children were not there because they were at school.  We only saw the ones with severe special needs.   There are currently around 100 children in the orphanage.  I always wondered why we had not found many who were adopted from her orphanage.  I found out why today.  They said only 20 have been adopted from that orphanage and Lydia was the first.  I could tell it was very emotional for some of the workers last time to see her go, and that must have been the reason.  After visiting, giving out gifts, and taking photos for about an hour we left the orphanage and went to Lydia's finding spot.  We were unable to do that last time so it was nice to be able to see it this time.  After a bit of searching we ended up at a noodle restaurant right next to the orphanage.  On the way home we stopped at the earthquake manorial and museum.  We had stopped there last time on our way back to Beijing.  I have a lot of good memories of that place.  Last time as we were leaving the area was the first time we saw Lydia smile when she was not with her nanny.  It was also the first place Lydia allowed Erica to not carry her and walk herself.  We then drive back to the hotel, ate and typed our blog post.  I'm sure Erica will touch this up (which means completely redo) this tomorrow.  We all need a good nights sleep,

Here is a couple of photos from today (11/16/18):