the abominable cupcake

After a road-trip that some thought harrowing (and Barb thought positively exhilirating) we've made it down from Changsha to Hengyang. This is another big city, but with with very few foreigners, and the ICC work is less developed. We've enjoyed spending time at the big child centre here, holding the babies and playing with the kids, hearing moving stories from the ICC staff about the journeys on which these disabled children have travelled. Stay tuned for more photos (or if you're lucky enough to have him as your friend, check Randy's facebook!)

Back in Changsha a few days ago I drew a little maze for Miranda to work through in our spare time. She solved it in record time ("I'm so good at mazes!" she said) and the prize, I promised, was a cupcake. Easily produced, I thought, and I found one that same day at a bakeshop. It had purple icing and Miranda was very impressed. After supper that night, family-style, after we had finished our dozens of delicious and spicy entrees, M opened her cupcake and took a bite. It was a traumatic bite for her: the cheery purple icing concealed densely packed chunks of red-bean. So that was the only bite she took - who could blame her? But the rest of us didn't want to waste a perfectly good (if somewhat culturally surprising) cupcake, so we took turns digging a little deeper into it. You can imagine our chagrin when we found beneath the red-bean density a heart of pork floss! Purple candy-icing, red-bean chunks and pork-floss - now THAT's a cultural experience!

I'll feel terrible if Miranda never wants to come back to China. But the good news is she seems to have taken it all in stride! This morning at the children's centre she was taking the lead in reaching out to children with down's syndrome and cerebral palsy, hugging them and letting herself receive their often overenthusiastic hugs. She's become a good friend of the ICC "poster girl," Liang-liang - you'll see some photos of them shortly. Miranda doesn't seem to be intimidated by some of the gaps that I feel between myself and these ICC kids.

I was thinking of that line from somewhere in the Bible - "and a little child shall lead them."

-Steve