Aw, shucks!

Today we visited Bethel, an orphanage to the south-west of the city that cares for blind and visually impaired orphans. The children who live here (right now there are 35), stay in family groups in the houses pictured below. There is one staff person for every two children, and they do a fabulous job giving them a great environment in which to grow and learn.

They go to school each day in this building. That's corn out front, not chrysanthemums.

The kids range in age from babies to primary school children, plus a few older kids who have stayed on to work at the school. A few kids are adopted by foreigners each year, and many of the kids in middle school and high school are transferred to the School for the Blind in Beijing. We enjoyed our tour of this facility and hearing about what they do to raise awareness of what can be done to help children who have visual impairments.

But the main reason we were there today was corn.

Bethel is situated in a farming community, and they use their farm land not only to help feed the children in the orphanage, but they also sell some of their crops and supplement the childrens' support from the proceeds. There are acres of corn that need to be harvested and then shucked before it can be sold, and the shucking is where we came in.

 

 

This corn is not for human consumption, so it was full of lovely fat grubs, spiders and other fun creatures. There was also some time for R to make a new friend!