Terracotta Warriors

First, please excuse the picture quality.  When we arrived a the Terracotta Warrior Museum  I discovered that my battery was dead on my camera so these were all taken with the ipod that Jerry uses to learn Chinese.

As you can see, William's demeanor isn't any better but in general it has been a much better day than yesterday.  Yesterday evening after watching the Jesus Film for Children  in Mandarin and eating dinner in the room Will escalated the crying , moaning and wailing that he had been doing off and on all day.  Now I understand that he is grieving, but the loud wailing and moaning is something I am not familiar with and I have a hard time believing that it is not contrived as a deliberate bid for attention and control.  After ignoring it for awhile, I told him to be quiet.  That only worked for a few minutes and then it began again.  My next strategy was to sit beside him and stroke his back.  I could tell he didn't like it, but he resisted lashing out at me.  Then I began talking ( I actually suspect that he understands alot more English than he is willing to acknowledge).  I told him about the things he would do at home, like piano lessons,and that the children at home prayed for him every night, and then just generally yammered on.  After awhile, I got up and went back to my bed and said , if he wanted to talk and not wail I would be happy to listen. A few minutes later, he got quiet and went to sleep.  

This morning he was as grouchy as ever and   when our guide asked about him, she decided to have first his orphanage director, then his Chinese foster father talk to him. At length.  So his face is still grouchy and he feigned disinterest in the Terracotta Warriors but at least the noise has stopped. I bought some swords for the boys and when we got back to the hotel and handed it to him, he actually took it from me. A first.  Thank yous come later. And at the moment he is playing with it and not crying.

I told our guide (when she kept making him get in the pictures) that one day he is going to be very embarrassed about these pictures).  And then we will all be laughing. But we aren't there yet.