Hi, Everyone,
Well, tomorrow is the big day. We meet our rep at 9:00am in the hotel lobby to take the trip to the Orphanage Service Center, where we’ll meet our son. If it’s anything like when we got Kira, the transition is quick and unceremonious. However, since we’re traveling on our own, we might have more of an opportunity for Q&A with a couple of those who took care of Bao Tong in the orphanage.
We met the rep this morning for a last review of the paperwork, schedule and funds. She is a high-energy, grandmotherly-like person who lives in Shanghai, so she knows many of the people we’ll need to deal with over the next few days. She’s going to try and get us in for a visit to the orphanage and to the place where Bao Tong was abandoned.
Naturally, we’re excited and a bit anxious about the meeting. The business side, while important, is easy and of little concern. There are many other things that occupy our minds, though. It doesn’t really matter, of course, what we might conjure in our minds; it doesn’t change the fact that the wheels have been in motion for a long time and there’s a convergence tomorrow morning at 9am.
We’ve been priming Kira for the big sister role for some time. She’s into it, and already has a list in her mind of the things she’ll need to teach him.
After meeting with our rep this morning, we took the subway to the Pudong district, where many of the big new buildings are. We went to the top of the SWFC (Shanghai World Financial Center). The elevator took only about 1 minute. I guess it’s technically a bit shorter than the new skyscraper in Dubai, but has the highest observation deck in the world. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Once above a few hundred meters, anything is scary-tall when you’re on top of it. The building looks like it has a handle on top. The handle is one of the observation floors and has clear glass tiles in parts of the floor. Kira was especially interested in those, standing on them and squealing as she looked down.
We caught the subway again to People’s Square where we went to Nanjing Road to find a place to eat. We took some side streets to find something less commercial. We found a place where there weren’t any tourists (except for us). Amid the stares, we had some soup, a pork dish with lots of mushrooms and some sticky rice balls for desert. They're really not as funny as they sound. We dodged the scooters, walked to the next metro station and caught the subway back home. There was a whale of a trantrum in the subway station again today, but there are so many people and it's so loud there, no one noticed accept the people staring at us. Not to worry, though - from first-hand experience, tantrums are not unique to kids in the US.
On the anthropological front, it’s obvious that the Chinese are “westernizing” quickly. It’s tempting to walk around a place like Nanjing Road, with all of the big, name-brand stores and extravagant boutiques, or see the dependence on smart phones and think that other aspects of society will evolve as it has in the US or other modern western country, but that’s not the case. China’s experience will continue to be unique to them.
That’s it for now. Tonight’s post is a short one – need to get some rest for tomorrow’s big adventure! We’ll let you know how it goes. Until then, our thoughts and prayers are with you, too.

Kim, Michelle & Kira

P.S. We still are considering between the two names for the new kid. We need to decide tomorrow after we meet him.