Sheesh

I think Garner secretly enjoys telling all the worst things about this place. I've been thinking about how easy this actually is. We were pretty caught up in the travel, the stress, worrying about going to a 3rd world country, but the reality is that we've never felt in danger at all. I sit up on the balcony snuggling with cute babies, enjoying the incredible scenery around us, and it feels no more dangerous that sitting around on our deck. The view off the balcony is incredible. Mountains spread around us, with patches of fairly vertical fields for farming (they hang off a cable to farm!!) and down the valley you can even see the ocean. It's incredibly beautiful. Our little compound has 2 buildings on it, the main house, with all the babies (100 of them, all under age 2!) and the guest house, a smaller building that we are staying in. The whole place is surrounded by a wall with a locked gate. When they arrive with new volunteers or adopting families, they honk at the door and it gets unlocked for them. Down the road is another house, the toddler house, which has about 65? I think kids from age 2-12, though most are 2-4 yrs old, also a locked up area. All the kids get adopted out of here, in fact they usually have a waiting list of parents. So almost all these kids have waiting families, all waiting for paperwork, visas and passports to come though. They send stuff to their kids and we take it out to play with them with it, and we show them the pictures of their family. It currently is taking about 18-24 months from when they get a kid to when they actually get to bring them home. What a hard wait!