China - day 3 continued...

We ended up staying at Mia's former Social Welfare Institute for quite a while. Before coming here, Mia and I had several conversations in the last year about "where she came from". Throughout our trip to Qianjiang (pronounced "Tchiang jung" by the way) , I pulled Mia aside and I told her to try to stop for a moment and take a mental picture in her head of the sights, sounds, and smells - so she would remember this always.  We ended up having to walk all the way back down the hill into the city, because we couldn't get 2 taxis that far up. It was neat to think that that was the same hill that Mia and her 6 "China Sisters (the ones that were adopted at the same time as her) drove down on the way to Chongqing to meet us back in 2006. At the bottom of the hill, we found 2 taxis and gave them the address of where Mia was found back in 2005. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this. I wasn't sure of Mia's reaction and I was just a bit overall nervous. The taxi dropped us off at the end of the road and so we had to walk a bit to find the number. We had actually paid to have someone take pictures of it before, but I was so surprised to see the surrounding area (which the pictures we had taken didn't show). The area was across from a park (green area), and beside a residential area (lots of housng, but few businesses) and less than 200 meters from a hospital. Again, that was definitely part of the puzzle. She was found at 1 month and had double ear infections when we first met her (although we didn't know this until we got back home). I wonder now if maybe the proximity to the hospital may have had somethng to do with her ears? We had no idea prior to this trip that the hospital was practically right next door to where she wa found. Mia's reaction to her finding location was very positive - and quite happy to it see for her own eyes. We walked to the end of the street to see what else was in the immediate area and then had dinner on the street at a Hotpot place across from the Hospital. It was neat to be there at night too (as it turned dark while we eating) - a warm (and very humid) summer day, but even as it was drak - a nice place.  It was a heartfilling day for sure!

This is the view looking back up at the Social Welfare Institute as we began our walk down the big hill...

The driving is quite comical - you have cars and motorccyles and wagons all together

The city only has 100,000 people and this is the kind of thing we saw a lot of. Everyone was outdoors. They definitely did not have a lot of money, and worked hard, but you could see that they were happy. Maybe one reason is because they get to be with each other all day...

This is what many of the men do - Mahjong and playing cards (the same game our friend taught us)...

We tried quite a bit of street food - it was very good!

And this is typical too...

The view of one of the main streets in Qianjiang

Kids were everywhere and walked home from school alone.  It was so strange to imagine this being Mia's life - she may have been in the same class as thse girls - who knows... Another funny thing too - everyone tried to get Mia to translate stuff to us (they all thought she cuold speak Chinese of course)

This is us walking up to Mia's finding location. The finding location is up a bit further on the left, the restaurant that we ate at is directly on the left, and the hospital is directly across the street from the restaurant on the right... 

And this is the spot that Mia was found. The building that was there in 2005 was torn down, so this is a new building on the left.

Mia in front of the street sign

This was one of the thousands of kids we saw on the trip (I was shocked to see kids everywhere  - all the time). Children are a definite priority in this culture. Anyway - This is what I meant by so many of the children had "the same look" (not exactly like Mia, but the features are consistant- small little lips and big cheekbones, and blackish brown hair (not pure black) . We saw several different girls that reminded us of each the girls in our adoption group. It was actually really neat.

Around the corner from Mia's finding location was a big square where people gather...

walking back down towards the restaurant and hospital...

our hotpot dinner...

The Hospital across the street. This was where our new friend from the train was born. We wondered if  maybe this is where Mia was born too...

I love my little sticker (I call her my sticker because we are always together :-) Such an incredible day - The puzzle is slowly filling up and the picture is really starting to come together!