It’s one of the prettiest rooms in China I’ve ever seen. Shiny floors. Lots of windows. Bright colors. Music notes that light up on the ceiling. And a spot in the middle of the room where you can whisper and hear your voice echo. Front and center in that 4th floor music room is a baby grand piano and a full drum set. And, no one on staff can play either of them, so I was told.

During our tour on Day 1, when we entered this room and were all ooo-ing and ahh-ing, the director asked if any of us could play either. Not really was our answer.

But, on Day 3, some of the boys’ pleading and leading and “boom boom”s made Kyle cave.

Art class became a full on party as Kyle tried his hands at the boom boom. His bravery was somehow contagious because as soon as he was ready to stop, Jen sauntered up to the scene in humility and surprised all of us with this.

 

And, I thought the orphanage was the only thing that was going to surprise me. Silly me.

I knew it would be a stretch. But, I really wanted to try it. Drawing with two hands at the same time is hard, but it’s really good. Simply put, it makes both sides of your brain work together, a dialog that helps us more fully express and understand emotions and thoughts and has even shown to increase measures of intelligence and processing.

We showed the children pictures of trees from all over the world–including some from our own yards and those of some of their friends from the orphanage who have already been adopted. Then, we asked them to draw one of them using both hands at the same time.

Some said they couldn’t. Some said it was too hard. Some simply said no.

But we said hǎo bù hǎo, just try it. Yes, it’s hard, but just try it. See what happens when you try something hard.

And, most of them did.

And, it was good. As their brains were making firing away and making connections, we were also making connections. And, I stood back in awe, wanting a recording of the scene happening before me to be forever recorded in my own brain.

Maybe this week that started rough with lots of surprises and some new structure and rules that seemed at first would hold us back wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Body tracing. I’d say it was a hit. I was a hot sweaty mess, but it was a hit.

We had a few who hesitated and who were content to mostly just observe…or have the freedom to observe themselves.

Some kids just wanted to be traced, giggling the whole time as we glided a marker around their frames, trying to lift their heads mid-trace to sneak a peek before it was complete. That was enough. Coloring and cutting were overrated.

Others could handle a bit more and wanted to roll out the paper, trace their bodies, and get a bit creative with color and scissors. One gave himself tiger pets when he was done. And, another may have made himself into some Japanese comic strip character I never heard of.

And, then there was one, one who took it all very seriously. He added eyes and a mouth and hair. He colored in clothes and shoes and teeny triangle fingers and toes. With every part he completed, he called one of the Měiguó rén over to admire it. When he couldn’t think of anything else to add, he managed to come up with one more thing.

…which left us in a bit of a quandary.

Do we cut out around his boy parts or dis-man-tle him?

Our translator giggled as I told her to tell him we were going to cut off that part. She giggled as she told him. He didn’t giggle. But, he did accept it like a man.

Clearly.