Photos of Dianbai

Here are some photos of Dianbai - Nina's home town. It is also called Shuidong (city by the water) since it is located right on the South China Sea. Dianbai is known for its seafood which we sampled when we had lunch with the orphanage director. We were told that it is custom to eat your soup before any of the other dishes. Fortunately for us, it was fish skin soup - my personal favorite - much better than snake skin soup! It was actually pretty good and would have been better if I hadn't know what I was eating.

This is the gate to the orphanage where Nina spent her first 10 months of life. As Hannah mentioned below, we were asked by the director to not post photos of the inside of the orphanage. It is located down an old winding back street. It was clear that neighbors don't see white people all that often as word spread fast and people all poked their heads out their doors and children sped down the street on their bikes to catch a peak of us.

This is us with the orphanage director and his assistant director. They were very nice. The assistant director appeared to be very fond of Nina as did all of the nannies. When we were eating lunch she taught us how to feed Nina a gigantic spoonful of rice in one bite!

This is a very nice old woman who was interested to see that we were carrying Nina on the front of us instead where we are supposed to be carrying her - on our back of course! She thought we were pretty silly!

Here are Hannah and Nina by the South China Sea. I went down to the water while Hannah tried to get Nina to sleep and collected a bag of shells and sand. The water was actually quite warm. I only has a moment to take in the beauty of the ocean until I was accosted by a swarm of cart pulling vendors trying to sell me giant conch shells. It was pretty cool to be looking out at a body of water that stretches all the way to where my girls are back in Maine!

And lastly, a truck load of live piglets. After all, it is the year of the pig.