4
Location: Baotou
Beginning day four, we woke up on the overnight train from Beijing to Baotou. After arriving, we shuttled to our hotel and took some much-needed showers since day three consisted of constant sweating on the Great Wall and painting classes. We then gathered in the lobby to walk over to the host apartment, which has the primary purpose of eating and gathering as a group. Once we had a breakfast full of fresh fruit and associated ourselves with the schedule for the next few days, we went to the children’s orphanage and held a casual meeting with the woman who runs the orphanage, and she briefed us on the conditions of the kids and how to take care of them. We then divided into four groups to go to the four separate rooms of children to get a feel for the environment and the different age groups of the kids. After spending about an hour in a room, we would switch to go to the next. We stayed at the orphanage until 5:00 then walked back to the hotel to regenerate ourselves before dinner…which ended up being bonding time with card games among the students. Unfortunately, nobody was able to take pictures at the orphanage, so we don’t have any pictures of the children and what we did today. We do have a picture of the lit up sign to welcome us to the hotel, which was a great surprise! The next picture is us right before we went to play with the kids, and then there are a few of us hanging out and snacking. Hopefully, we can access some of the photos that the orphanage takes so we can share with you what we’re doing! Eventually, we made our way to a Mongolian style hot-pot dinner, which was an addition to our immersion into Chinese culture. Finally, we closed off our night early by relaxing in our rooms.