Jiangxi: What life might have been like for my daughter.

In Jiangxi, our agency set up a visit to a village similar to the one our child could have come from.   Some of the people from the village allowed us to walk through their house and see the surroundings.  Granted, this was not near the orphanage.  That was about 1-2 hours away on country roads.  We had an option of visiting, but we did not think it would be fair to our child to take the same journey that she took the day before.  Had I had a chance to do it again, I would go.  The city was the only place we got to visit.  I'm sure one day, we will bring our daughter back to visit the area she came from.

The day we were to visit the village, one of the families decided not to go.  They were concerned about bird flu.  It did not bother us.  If we saw a bird walking crazy, we'd stay away from it.  We only saw a couple of chickens walking around.  They looked fine.

We loaded up in our bus and drove to the outskirts of the city.  At this point, it looked like a farming community.  There were brick houses and people walking around.  Some had bikes.  There were people selling meat hanging on hooks, on the side of the road.  Not a lot of vehicles were around. Where we got off the bus, there was another person selling meat.

We walked toward the houses.  Off to the left was a huge piece of land for farming.  On it where chickens and roosters.  There were many houses near the open land.  One of them was the bathroom.  By the looks of it, the families shared this bathroom.  We went through the house and looked at the rooms.  They had a kitchen, bedrooms and an eating area.

The kitchen had a wok built up like a stove, where the cooking was done.  It was heated by wood.  In the eating area, they had a table with food sitting on it.  The food was covered by a screen cover.  That was done to keep the bugs off the food.  Once we were done looking around, we walked outside and were offered a seat.  We talked with the people who lived there.  We asked questions and they graciously answered.  They also commented about our adoptions.

It was an interesting visit.  It gave us an idea of how our children could have lived or how their parents lived.  It also gave us a view of how you can live with less.