The Inn of the 41st Happiness

I wanted to show you just how much our new house has progressed.  By the way, the title is a play on a movie made in 1958 with Ingrid Bergman called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.  Apparently a true story of a woman in China during the war. You will have to google this if you want to know more. the 41th happiness is becuase we have 41 babies.  Thank you Siew for the reference.

It has an enormous amount of work and so many volunteers have helped.  I am so indebted to them for all their time, effort and dedication and for the countless hours they donated.  At the top of the list is Josh Lee, who came and offered his free professional help for five weeks and which turned into so much longer.  I am so extremely grateful to him because he really made my life so much easier.  Tenacity in the face of all opposition is a very admirable quality, Josh.  Hand in hand with all the volunteers, we received donations that made so many of the projects possible.  Thank you so much for the ability I had to make some chooses that allowed us some much needed extras. My grateful thanks to the landlords who remained true to their word about the many improvements they agreed to make.  Thank you to Paul Chu and his work crew for working so hard on this project.

We are so grateful for all the donations large and small. It made a building into a home for the babies.  We have already gotten interest from a magazine to come and take pictures and the national TV show from Shaanxi has filmed a 30 minute program about the new place and Starfish in general.  The interview was done in English and they will post it on the web.  I will be interested to see what the final result is because we taped for about 2 hours.

We moved last Friday and Saturday and at the moving was the easy part.  The reorganization is going to take weeks.  Right now, we have 12 volunteers who are working full time to help and many other volunteers who have come to add their time and efforts.

Thank you to one and all for all your help and support.

The whole house is not completely finished yet, but this will give you a great idea where we are, with some additional photos later when we are finished with everything. Thank you to Cindy who made this slideshow of all the pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7VQTyMD5tc

Life, love and laughter,

The Innkeeper of the 41th happiness,
Amanda

At Starfish, we have taken care of 124 children to date, arranged more than 130 surgeries and had 53 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Canada and in China.  Our latest adoption was Kansas in the middle of January.  We currently have 41 babies under the age of 3.  WE MOVED on January 14, 2010 and now live in our "castle".

Starfish Children's Services
US Tax Number:  20-4682916
Xian China

www.thestarfishfosterhome.org
http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com
http://chinesestarfishcleft.blogspot.com
Email: throwingstarfish0913@gmail.com
Cell: 86.1348.812.4847