sleeping beauty.

Today was wonderful. I'm sorry everybody at home, but I genuinely don't want to leave this place. (Almost) everything about this day has been absolutely wonderful. I almost can't describe it. But I'll try:

1. I woke up at 7:30, which is a good three hours later than I've been sleeping lately. I woke up feeling a little sick to my stomach and a tiny bit miserable. I downed my water bottle and set off to get SOME work done.

2. I missed lunch because I was feeling sick so I grabbed some instant ramen (never again) from the gift shop. At this point, I remember thinking to myself, "I JUST WANT THIS DAY TO BE OVER."

3. After the great ramen debacle, I just wanted to lay in bed for the rest of the day. I didn't though, instead, I went to hand out some sponsor gifts in the homes. The first place I went to was the clinic, which is where the children with some of the more serious cases are kept. The clinic was full of adorable, smiling babies. My day became instantly 100% better.

4. We headed to one of the homes to drop off one more gift. I sat on the floor with Mya, a girl with CP, for a good half hour. All I really did was play with her hair and touch her arm but it made her so happy. I feel like "humbling" has become the buzzword around here and it's overused but I'll just say it: sitting there with her was very humbling. I was almost scared about her condition. I didn't want to touch her because she seemed so fragile so I tried to send her a little love at first by giving her a smile. She seemed so uneasy so I began stroking her hair and she immediately calmed down. She's a beautiful girl.

5. At 4:30, the big kids came home from school. This means that Moses was back. If you don't already know, I grew very close to Moses while I was here last year. He's an amazing child. He's deaf, which I can't relate to but he's also not very patient, which I can identify with in a huge way. We formed an instant connection. When I left last year, instead of giving me a hug goodbye, he pushed me away and hit me. He's an older kid so I guess he's used to getting close to somebody only to find that they end up leaving. When I saw again for the first time a few days ago, there are no words to describe the meeting. I didn't know if he would recognize me or not but he did. He saw me coming and I saw his face light up through the window. He ran up to me and gave me the world's biggest hug when I walked in. And of course, I cried. A lot. Just held him and cried. I wish I was old enough to adopt him. The love that I have for this child is unparalleled. Even though he's not my own, I feel like he's a part of me. His awful goodbye to me last year is a big part of the reason that I decided to come back this year. Getting to spend time with him these last few days has been complete and utter bliss. Truthfully, I just had to stop typing this because I started sobbing thinking about saying goodbye to him again. Not going to think about that anymore. I still have almost a month to go. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Today, he was less possessive than he usually is. I'm seeing a change in his demeanor already and it's amazing. He used to not let any other kid come near me. He'd hit and kick the other kids but he didn't do that today. He let me play with Mya and he let another little girl sit on my lap. It was almost unbelievable! He pulled out a Sleeping Beauty book (my favorite Disney princess) and we flipped through it and looked at the pictures. At the end, he pointed to a picture of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming. He pointed to the prince and then to himself and to Sleeping Beauty and then to me. My heart melted. In the picture, the prince and the princess were dancing. He grabbed my hand just like in the picture and then started giggling uncontrollably. Goodness, I love this kid! It was so hard to leave tonight. I can't wait until tomorrow.

6. After hanging out with the kids, we went out to dinner with some nice Canadian folks who are visiting for the night. We impressed them with our not-comepletely-ethnocentric knowledge about hockey, Dr. Who, and measuring temperature in celsius. Such pleasant people come by here, it's so nice to be able to rub shoulders with so many kindred spirits.

Today started out so bad but turned out to be unforgettable. I guess a part of me wants it to be a bad day again because I'm about to go do some intense yoga with Sara. No pain, no gain, right?

xo,
e.m.

such joy

There really are no words for the intense joy that I felt yesterday when I went to see the kids. It was beautiful to be reunited with some and to meet new ones and to to start to build new friendships. I don't know how I'm ever going to leave but I just won't think about that now. 

xo,

e.m.

oh, what a day

If anybody were to ever say to you, "today was a big day. I went to Walmart." you would probably assume that they don't get out much. I can assure you that I do get out a lot and having said that, yesterday was a big day, I went to Walmart. But really. Walmart in China. It's kind of an overwhelming experience. Today was a holiday so there were a lot more people than usual which means that my bright red hair and I got a lot of strange looks. It's humbling and it puts a lot of things in perspective. I realized how completely useless I would have been if I didn't have a Chinese-speaking friend with me. She deserves some major kudos for putting up with my dumb questions every four seconds.

It's currently 7:00 in the morning and I've been up since 4:30 because I'm a dummy and fell asleep at 8:30 last night. I'm a little tired but the fact that we get to see the kids today trumps any amount of exhaustion that I could ever feel. Some are still here from my trip last year but there's mostly a whole new batch, even a few who got here only a few days ago. I can't wait to hug them and maybe even squeeze their cheeks! Okay, maybe not the latter but it's just SO hard to resist!

xo,
e.m.

japan?

Hello, or should I say, konnichiwa? After a fourteen-hour plane ride, Japan customs, and a fifteen-minute ($70) cab ride, Jenna and I are finally settled in at our sketchy hotel home for the night. I'd say that given the circumstances, we're both unusually chipper. I guess since our flight tomorrow is only four hours? Or that Japanese food is amazing? Or that the New Year just happened? (Fourteen hours before the East Coast so for all the folks at home, hello from the future!) Or that we get to hang out with adorable kids for the next few weeks? Or that we finally get to sleep. Pretty much a combination of all of those things. Since I'm exhausted, I'm going to cut it short for tonight. At least I'll sleep well knowing that there's a nice chair blocking any intruders from coming in to our room. Yes, one of the movies that they showed on the plane was "Taken." Probably a bad choice on the airline's part but at least it scared us into taking extra precautions... right?

xo,

e.m.

january's adventure eve

11:12PM on December 29th, 2012. Twenty-four hours from now, I'll be over some vast stretch of land or sea in some unknown time zone. Nervous, terrified, anxious, excited, nostalgic, apathetic. There is so much going on in my mind that even blogging is hard for me. Blogging. Roughly one-half of my career. Something I do every day, my ability to do so being rendered utterly useless. Needless to say, I'm going to have a full head of grey hair come February. And you know what? Bring it on.

This blog will definitely be something different than a lot of you l&l followers are used to. (I'll be keeping up with that as much as I possibly can so don't worry!) I'll be pouring my heart out here, sharing my daily triumphs and struggles. If you're looking for a cute way to style a chunky-knit sweater or how to make a barrette out of chocolate somehow, you won't find that here. What you will find are photographs of the precious little children I'll be spending time with, inspiring stories, and the occasional vlog.

Now, enough procrastinating. I need to go and weigh my suitcases... fingers crossed that they're not more than 50lbs!

xo,
e.m.