Children's Village

Another unscheduled stop – we were supposed to go to the Museum of Science and Technology – but we have one of those at home. So Gloria was able to arrange a visit to the provincial Children’s Village, a bit over an hour from Xi’an.

The children, who range from 3 to 17 – just like our group – are mostly not orphans, but the children of prisoners.

They live in one-story dorms, eight to a brightly painted room,

with the older kids segregated by sex and the older girls’ dorm festooned with pop star posters.

The younger children performed a little dance for us

– so, with the impression that they probably were made to feel like performing seals for visitors, we reciprocated

Tom garnered a fan club by using the universal communication tool of a notebook and dinosaur sketches.

The girls posed with our girls

and compared notes on pop stars, and the boys played with the five balls we brought as a gift for the kids

We ended, of course, leaving chunks of cash as donations – and Aaron kicked in an extra $50 from his savings. I don’t know how much of it will reach the children, or even the Children’s Village. But they have so little, and we have so much.