Paul: the starfish baby with the awesome hair :)

Paul came to Starfish shortly before I went there. His hair naturally sticks up and it is pretty darn cute. He was about the size of a newborn baby even though he was 3 months old. The orphanage had said that he was blind when they gave him to Starfish, but he obviously wasn't. He isn't a full Chinese, so that is why we thought that they wanted to get rid of him. While we were there one of the volunteers fell in love with him and spent every possible minute with him. By the time we left Starfish he was wearing 0-3 months and was the chubbiest baby in the isolation room (the room where they keep the newer babies). Shortly after we came back home he started having problems breathing and would turn blue. They took him to the doctors and found out that he was missing two chambers of his heart and his veins and arteries were doing the opposite thing. Today we got the news that Paul's heart failed on Tuesday while he was sleeping. Xiao Liu, one of the nannies, was holding him. Kelly, the volunteer, left a few days later.

It's pretty sad when one of the babies dies, and two have since I was there. But at least you know that they were loved and cared for for that part of their life. Amanda really makes sure that those babies are loved 24/7 while they are at Starfish.

China: Starfish Foster Home

In April, my mom took me to China for my 13th birthday. While we were there we stopped in Xian and volunteered at the Starfish Foster Home for a week. It was a blast and I fell in love with 48 babies. I'll probably be talking about them a lot in my blog. Starfish Foster Home takes care of kids with special health needs from local orphanages. They make them all healthy again and take care of necessary surgeries. It's amazing what they do. They don't get any funding from the government, just donations from other people. When I came home from being out of the country for 3 weeks I decided that I wanted to do more for these kids. I started my etsy shop and I am in the middle of planning a fundraiser that should happen sometime in August. I'm planning on going back next year and bring tons of baby stuff with me. I'm also doing 5th Sunday lesson at our church tomorrow about my trip, so that should be interesting. I only have 20 minutes to talk, the rest of the time belongs to my mom. 

My sister thinks that I should tell a little about myself, since this is the first post on my blog. I don't think that anyone besides my friends and family are going to stop and read this, but I suppose I'll listen to her. :) 

My name is Rachel, but you should have already guessed that. I have 5 younger sisters and a doggie named Oreo. I've played the piano for around 8 years and I love soccer. I lived in Las Vegas for the first half of my life and now I live in a small town in Oregon. I'm homeschooled, which is awesome because I can finish school early and hang out with my friends all day long. I used to want to be a writer when I grew up, but now I think that I'll move to Xian instead. :)