Lydia lives in Shaanxi province near where the terra-cotta warriors are. If you aren’t familiar with the terra-cotta warriors, they are funeral art that a farmer discovered in 1974. They date back to 210 B.C. and number over 9,000 soldiers, horses, and chariots, etc. The first Chinese emperor Qin had them made for him for his burial place because he expected to rule a world in his afterlife. We’ll get to visit this site with Lydia. Looking forward to seeing that.
I was able to connect with another adoptive family who visited Lydia’s city just this past summer. Although we don’t see her in their pictures, we can see her exact crib (we could figure it out from the updated pictures we just posted based on the window and the shelf behind her). And, we appreciated the pictures of the surrounding area so that we can get a sense of Lydia’s history.
This is outside of her orphanage. The gardens and the playground look really nice. I wonder if the flowers will be in bloom in April.
This is the orphanage building.
This is the isolation room where all newly admitted babies go first. It’s hard to imagine a little child in that incubator by himself or herself. The word isolation itself grieves me.
This is the babies’ playroom. It’s a cute little area. This is where one of Lydia’s original referral pictures were taken because it has the square flooring under her bouncy seat in the picture.
This is the baby room, through the window there is the isolation room. You can see where we figured out Lydia’s crib is, assuming she’s kept the same crib for the last 6 months. But, the crib is empty in this picture. I wonder where she was.