Trip to China??

This summer I have plans to go to China with my mom. Nothing is finalized, but we are trying to set it up since I won't be going to summer camp this year. The trip should be really interesting since, I haven't ever been back to China since I was adopted, so this will be my first time. I don't know the language at all and I will have to chance to go back and visit my orphanage.

It's interesting because I wouldn't consider myself to have a real interest in finding my birth parents unlike many internationally adopted children;  yet I feel almost a moral obligation to go back to China at least once in my lifetime. My mom always promised me that we would go back to China at some point but I never really acknowledged that or cared.

So now that the opportunity has come, I assume I will be going back to China next summer. There's a lot of questions that come up when I think about going to China. The first will be, If I don't know the language how will I be able to do anything? We will most likely have to get a translator for part of it at least since learning Chinese takes years. I'm also curious about where we will go. China is HUGE, so what do I want to visit.

My mom and I also discussed finding a program and doing a project to help an orphanage in China. I'm definitely interested in finding a project to do, because it can help an orphanage so much. My orphanage does not accept any programs to help, and they recently switched directors. Hopefully this will be good because the last lady who ran my orphanage was not very nice. She wouldn't accept toys or blankets, and didn't want families to really contribute to the orphanage. She was very secretive about the place, and when my mom went to China to adopt me, my mom was the only one who went into the orphanage. This was only because the director was in meetings that day.

So I'm curious about who the new director is. Also, technically once I am 18 years old I am supposed to be able to get my files from the orphanage. Supposedly they found me with a note on my head that said my birthday and maybe something else. I am curious about what the note says, but the likelihood of the orphanage having my files is pretty small.

Either way, this trip to China will definitely be a really interesting experience for me.