12
Location: Beijing
After breakfast in the morning, we headed to the Beijing Children’s Hospital to do morning service. One of the leaders of Dew Drops, Rebekah, told us that many of the kids would be heading back to the orphanage, but the hospital has also just received a few new kids as well. Some of us were sad that the kids we’d been playing with were leaving, but we knew it meant that they were getting healthier and stronger every day. Most of us played with the Dew Drops children in the play area, while the rest of us played with the other family children at the hospital. I liked playing with a young boy named Yaoyao because he is super charismatic and bossy and I like speaking Chinese to him since he is really funny. In the afternoon, we went back to Roundabout, which is a Goodwill-type charity, to do some afternoon service. Most of us felt tired while working because the work involved pumping up large inflatables with hand pumps to check if they had holes and sorted large bins of pens, but at the end of the day, we agreed that the progress we made was very satisfying and fulfilling. Doing service at the hospital and Roundabout is very different because, at the hospital, it is harder to see a physical representation of the impact we are making. However, as we discussed at dinner one night, the impact we are making on the kids’ lives and even helping the Ayis (in-hospital caretakers; pronounced I-ees) can be just as meaningful. At night, we went to Yangfang. Shaun, Maddie, Grace, Drew and I cooked dinner, unlike eating the usual pre-cooked Chinese meal, while the rest of the people played games. Because it was the 4th of July today, we decided to eat tacos for dinner while listening to a mix of Cuban music and Bruce Springsteen. After dinner, we went over a rough schedule of the next few days, and all of us are excited for what’s coming.