Yeah! By a fluke we found out that a care package that we sent the boys actually arrived.
We sent a small box of items to the little guys and were crossing our fingers that it would actually make it to them. (Lots of people send packages and find out later that they never arrived.)
We were told by our agency to keep the box "smaller than a shoe box." This is for two reasons. 1) to help it not get stuck in customs 2) to be able to be brought on the back of a bicycle to the orphanage as this is the normal delivery method in China. We were also told not to use expedited delivery as this would require someone to sign for the package and usually this requires someone to go to the post office which, the orphanages tend not to do. We also were told to make sure to declare the value as $0. That way, the orphanage would not have to pay any customs fees, again that they are not likely to do.
So we followed those instructions and crammed as much as we could into a very small box.
We included some cute little clothes; two "lovey blankets" given by grammy and grampy C; a baby photo album (meant to be handled by babies) that had pictures of Mommy and Daddy, Chloe (our dog), and our house (we didn't have their room put together or would have included picture of that as well); some chocolates for the nannies; and some candy for the older kids in the orphanage; and one of those cards that you can record into. We had Chloe bark for the card and taped her picture very securely to the card. We don't want them to be scared of her bark and are hoping the nannies will play with them, opening the card and letting them hear their doggy's bark while seeing her picture. We also included a disposable camera in the hopes that they will take pictures of them and their little friends and hopefully we will get it back at the time we go to adopt them.
[ Chloe doesn't bark alot, but when she does it is LOUD! It is usually if she wants to play and she has dropped her toy to close to herself and she thinks we should walk over to her to get it.
It is actually pretty funny. We say, "no you get it" to her and she'll bark a few more times while really getting her rear end working into a good wag and then she'll bring us whatever it is she wants us to play with. The only other time she really barks is if someone comes to the door. Nice LOUD bark! I love it! Makes the person on the other side wonder. I had someone who came to the door the other day say, looking nervously, "What kind of dog is that?" To which I answered, "A BIG ONE!" That's all I said! ]
So we sent that off while Grammy and Grampy C were here for a visit, knowing that we wouldn't know if they ever received it. Unless on the day we finally get to meet them we were one of the lucky families who did get the camera back full of pictures.
Yesterday we got an email from our agency that there had been a small mistake. They must have given us the wrong address as our package ended up at the old orphanage instead of the new one. But not to worry the staff from the older orphanage brought it to the new one!
(and our agency gave us the new address)
I'm not exactly sure when the new orphanage was opened, but from the research I've done online about their province I found out that they moved the babies and younger children over to the new orphanage soon after it opened.
This little mistake made my day!
