Present from the Mansens

Karyn, our wonderful friend and mother to Olivia, is a talented scrapbooker. She made this special page for Jack. Her daughter Olivia lived with Jack at Rong Xian Social Welfare Institute in Rongxian. They were very close and despite Olivia the fact that she was four years old, she called him her big brother. By adding "goh" to the end of his name Nong Goh, she was calling him older brother Nong.

I know Jack misses her because he gets so excited to view her blog. They live in Chicago, which is a dramatic difference in climate from Rongxian. Jack got lucky that we are on almost the same latitudinal line as his home town. In some of the pictures of Jack at the orphanage we even saw the same plants we have in our backyard. I think the similarities to China are few and far between, so we welcome the small things.

By the way, this picture was taken from the back seat of the van we rented to drive us to Rongxian. We were on the three and a half hour ride to the city from Nanning. Looking back on that trip, we are grateful to have had that opportunity.