Children's Day

When I was growing up, every year I would ask my mom, "how come we have Mother's Day and Father's Day but we never have Kids' Day?"  Her response to me each time was the same, "every day is kids' day."  If she lived in China her answer would have, "June 1st."  

Today was Children's Day in China, and to celebrate we travelled down to Fangshan (this is where the orphanage at which we will be working is located) and spent the day with 60-70 kindergarten students.  After school they did a program for the parents and then had a sort of carnival afterwards.  Our kids had a blast buying cookies and fruit and getting their faces painted and we had a blast selling popcorn and fruit to all of the kindergarteners and their families.  The kids from the orphanage heard there was a party going on next door and they wanted in on the action also.  

A word of explanation - at Fangshan, in the same complex, is our orphanage and also a kindergarten.  The kindergarten is for 3-5 year olds from the community.  These kids are not orphans.  In fact, much of the money earned from the kindergarten goes to fund part of the orphanage.  The orphanage is next door, and those kids are much older, 7-18.  The kindergarten has 60 students right now and is growing.  The orphanage (they prefer to call it a training school) right now houses 51 kids with another 50 on their way.  

After our Children's Day celebration a group of us went out to a wonderful Uiyghur restaurant (Uiyghurs are a people group that lives in NW China - mostly muslims) with our Director's wife and daughter.  We opted not to eat at the gou rou restaurant next door (if you don't know what gou rou is then ask your chinese friend).  We made a good choice.