Blake and I drive around on a 3
wheel electric scooter. We are adventurous and love to check out places that we
have no business going. One day for fun in our free time we took the scooter
for a ride. Next thing I know, we are off-roading cross a broken road, passing
under some railroad tracks having to duck our heads from the low bridge, and
coming into a small village of broken down houses, litter and rubble. As we
scoot deeper into the village we begin to see people sitting in chairs outside
their front doors, and just standing around. They stare at us as we go by.
White people are a rare site in the city, let alone this little village on the
outskirts of town. At the end of the bumpy road a group of 8 white haired
ladies sit around a table, 4 playing a game of Mahjong. We pull along side,
stop the scooter and say “Ni hao”, hello or Good day in Chinese. They all stop
what they are doing, laugh and look at us as if we were aliens gone nuts. They
begin to speak to us, but not a word of their language registers in our ears.
“Ting Bu Dong, Ting Bu Dong”, we say. These being the Chinese words for “I
don’t understand, I don’t understand.” We all have a laugh at the monolingual
Americans. As it turns out, so are they. So, after a strange game of charades
the ladies understand that we would like to join them in the mystical game of
Mahjong. Next thing I know, Blake and I are sitting at a table surrounded by
old ladies that don’t speak a lick of English trying to learn how to play this
game which we definitely do not understand. The ladies point at our tiles, and
motion for us to move specific ones, next thing I know there is cheering and
laughing and someone hands me a candy stating that I just won the match. I
don’t even know what I did!!
Moral of the story, we made friends
with some random people, and though we don’t understand each other in the least
bit, we sure had some good laughs.
I mentioned in a previous blog that
we take the kids out on “dates”. Well, we got the bright idea that the Mahjong
ladies would like to understand why we are here, and the kids back at the
orphanage would like to meet the Mahjong ladies. So, we loaded up the scooter
with Blake, me, 2 boys, and a walker, and began the bumpy journey back into
this village. We arrive with the same, “Ni hao”, and everyone laughs.
We unload the scooter and get the
kids some ice cream from the shop that the ladies sit in front of to play the
game. It is a weekend, so the 8 ladies are joined by a ton of village kids and
teens. The village kids are excited to see us, and want us to play with them.
So, we introduce our boys and finally everyone understands why we are here. We
try to get out boys to play with the locals, only to find out that our boys are
extremely shy in social situations. So, we stayed near our boys, bought them
some more ice cream and some cokes. Basically just let them wander around a
place they had never been before. The kids had a blast, and you could see the
excitement they had just to be out and about.
(Awkward moment time…)- So, nobody
in this village speaks English except for two 15 year old girls. After meeting
our kids, they in their broken English ask if they can meet the other orphans
back at the orphanage. Blake and I discuss it, and decide that they should wait
a day or two until we find out that it is ok that they come to the orphanage.
They explain it has to be today…
So, we decide that we will bring
them to the orphanage, leave them outside and downstairs while one of us runs
up and grabs an Aye to meet them and give them permission to come up. Mind you,
the Ayes don’t speak a lick of English either. In fact of the 4 adults here
only one lady speaks English, and she isn’t here….
So we all pull up to the orphanage.
Blake, me, 2 boys, a walker, the 2 girls, and another lady in her 30’s probably
who wanted to come too. Fortunately, or so we thought, the kids were all on the
playground and the Ayes all downstairs, outside. Perfect we thought…
10 seconds later, one of the Ayes,
sounding quite angry is speaking to the woman that came with, mean while one of
the boys we brought back is leading the 2 younger girls into the building as
Blake and I are distracted. Blake runs after the girls, I run upstairs in hopes
of finding Chew Gim, the English speaking Singaporean house mother. She’s not home, but luckily a woman name
Meng, had come over from England and happened to have grown up in Singapore as
well, and spoke Mandarin/Chinese. So I grab her and run back to the elevator explaining
that we thing we did a bad thing….
We get down stairs and everyone is
gone. The kids and ayes are nowhere in sight, Blake is walking back up to the
door of the orphanage, and the girls are gone.
Blake tells me, after a heated
debate between ayes and the older lady, the girls all left, the kids were sent
inside, (now mind you I was gone maybe 3 minutes, and the kids were not in the
elevator or upstairs when I began going down, and they were not downstairs when
I got down… The ayes sent them up 10 flights of stairs to get them back into the
orphanage. I am now panicking thinking that everything has gone terribly bad!
We take Meng back up the elevator
and find the ayes up on the 10th floor along with the kids. They
begin talking.
Turns out that everything was ok,
it is just that visitors are not aloud to just walk onto the property, they
have to check in with security and then in the office and get permission, and
that they were only asked to leave. That nobody was upset and things were cool.
Blake and I were relieved.
O the trouble we get in… Good times.
