The next post will be of rainbows, sunshine and lemon drops. I promise.

I hear parents talk of their adoptive children, always playing the same game.

Two little boys love to play the "present" game. They wrap themselves up in blankets and have their mother "unwrap" them to discover two beautiful baby boys as gifts. She hugs them overwhelmed by her good fortune and promises to keep them forever.

Another girl loves the "puppy" game. She hides, and her mother finds her, a little lost puppy. Her mother is overjoyed to have found a puppy, she names it and takes it home, promising to love and never leave it.

A second girl plays the "lost" game. Her parents lose her and then find her again. They coddle her and apologise, and promise never to keep her out of their sites.

One girl is honest. At six years old she tells her mother to hold her and feed her like a baby, she demands to be called "mommy's little baby".

In the hospital with Chun, I lay her down and stroke her to sleep. She wakes up and finds me gone and starts to scream. Everytime she sees me go to the door, she screams and holds out her hands, when the nurses come in she turns to me, cries and shakes her head. She is two.

Min Lian in a hospital in Singapore awaits surgery. She never speaks to me in Chinese because she knows I don't understand. When I try to leave she grabs my hand and tells me "Don't go!" in Chinese. After her surgery is complete she sulks in ICU, I figure it's best to leave her, but she tells me to stay. She is five.

Sheng Li before and after surgery would sleep for about twenty minutes, before jolting awake and crying. For a while I figured it was impossible to get him to stop, I would coddle him, feed him, change his diaper, sing to him, nothing seemed to work. He would only sleep soundly if I took him into my own bed, and laid beside him. He is two months.

While I'm positive Sheng Li does not know of his current situation, pretty sure that Chun has no greater hold on it and wouldn't be surprised if Min Lian didn't fully understand what has happened to her in her short life, they all instinctively know they've been left alone, and deep down they all assume that they will be left again.

I know of people back home, who go to disgusting lengths to be loved. They're so afraid of being alone that they ignore the people around them. They manipulate and hurt those people to see how commited they are to them.

The base of our culture is shadows, greed and self importance.
While humanity's basic needs are food, water and love.
Somewhere along the line, we misinterpreted the love part.

In Zimbabwae, Robert Mugabe has shit all over democracy and killed to regain presidency in a false election.

In Kazakhstan, doctors have re-used needles and infected over 70 children with HIV. They community has ostrasizes these children,

In China, a girl born in 2000 was taken to the hospital by her parents in 2006, then abandoned. She still awaits adoption.

A few weeks ago, a girl here was being sent back to her orphanage, a week away from being adopted, she suddenly died.

This morning, Chun was playing and fell down. I doubt she hurt herself, but she sat there and cried. Five nannies sat on the couches and watched her cry on the floor. When I picked her up, she hugged me and put her head in my chest. When I put her back down, she smiled and toddled off.

"There's too much.
And so little feels important.
What do you do?"