Foster Home Day 3

Each day at the foster home was better than the one before. We spent the morning of day three playing with the kids again. Then we were asked to clean the cribs in the red room. All of us worked together including Chanelle who was another volunteer from shanghai. She is originally from Vegas but has been teaching English in shanghai for the past two years. We finally got smart and broke out the music on Tony's iPhone and had mini dance party while we worked. All the kids were on their best behavior and Lily was right there by my side the entire time. She was a bit of a perfectionist and worked on getting the dust and dried milk from every slat of the crib. She must have known she was doing a good job because at one point she said to me, "don't expect me to do this at home. I'm fine doing it here but I don't want to do this much work at home." She must have read my mind because at that point I was thinking that I was really going to step up the amount of work the kids do around the house.



Our new friends LiChen and Carolyn came by again for the afternoon. It was quite leisurely as we sat around talking and enjoying the kids. After they woke up from their afternoon naps, I grabbed one of my favorite babies, Ava and brought her into our room. She is right around 1 and has a repaired cleft lip. We called her the flapper because whenever you would walk into her room she would flap her arms and give the biggest smile. I loved grabbing her and loving her. She is the best baby, very content. She and I lounged on my bed together and she loved playing with the wires to my headphones and the strap to my camera. Soon she fell asleep with the wires wrapped around one arm and the camera strap wrapped around her other arm.

Since it was the Lundbergs last night we decided to take a break and head into Xian to the old city wall. I live city walls and the wall around Xian is amazing. We were there late in the afternoon and there were no crowds. It was a blasted hot day but started to cool off when we arrived. We decided to rent bikes and ride the entire city wall, about 14 kilometers. The walk is flat and paved with flat bricks. It was a super easy ride. It is probably at the top of the list of my favorite things we did in China. Eli and Wilson and Cooper rode the bus into town instead of coming with us so they missed the bike ride which I regret because it was so awesome.

After the bike ride we ventured into the Muslim quarter of Xian for some dinner. This is a gorgeous tree line and lit street packed with people and moped taxis and all kinds of yummy street restaurants. We were up way past our normal 8:00 bedtime so I was pretty exhausted by the time we picked a place to eat. We arrived back home ready for bed.
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