Bei Hai research

Found out some really neat information about Jada's hometown, Beihai.

It is located on the south coast of China, near the Vietnam border. It has some of the nicest beaches in China and off the shore of Biehai are some of China's best PEARL BEDS. (Put your requests in now, first come first serve, supplies last until suitcases are full!!)

Looks like Beihai is a beautiful place with alot of parks and natural attractions.

I also found a great orgination called Half The Sky. This is a quick description from their site:

"Half The Sky was created by adoptive parents of orphaned Chinese children. Our purpose is to enrich the lives and enhance the prospects for the babies and children in China who still wait to be adopted, and for those who will spend their childhoods in orphanages. We establish early childhood education, personalized learning and infant nurture programs in Chinese welfare institutions to provide the children stimulation, individual attention, and an active learning environment."

They are involved currently in 22 orphanages in China and Beihai, where Jada is at, is one of them. They even have programs where you can volunteer to go to China and help expand the programs and have time to spend with the children in the orphanages. I have a feeling this won't be our only trip to China or even Beihai. There's nothing more we'd like is to have Jada go back and be a part of helping orphans from her home town.

We also found a Yahoo! Group dedicated to parents who have and are adopting from Beihai. Now we have even more specialized resources to make our trip as smooth as possible with as little surprises as possible.

Alot of good information available out there for us. We intend to be as prepared as possible without actually experiencing the trip.