Today we visited the Shanghai City orphanage. It is a wonderful facility. They showed us the rehabilitation center where outside families can bring their children as well. They have an area for autistic children, physical therapy, and accupunture, and the area for deaf and hard of hearing kids was on the second floor. Then we visited Amanda's classroom so she could say goodbye to her friends. I took a picture of her with her best friend, a boy. Most of the kids in the class appeared to be boys. They told us that pretty much all of the children are considered special needs since most couples in urban areas like Shanghai don't care whether they have girls or boys. The children in the classroom performed a song for us before we left. There was another little boy who cannot be adopted because of his heart issues, but who has a man I believe he said he was a retired banker from Poland who visits him twice a year, who came and brought treats for everyone and Amanda managed to snare a few of those as well.

Amanda took the visit very well. They children were glad to see her, and she understood that she was here to say goodbye to her friends. When we were outside, a group of teenagers (over 13 so too old to be adopted) from the orphanage came out to study outside. They all seemed to know Amanda. There was a girl in a wheelchair who appeared to me to be sad that YangYang was leaving. All in all, it was a nice visit and it was really nice to see what a wonderful facility it was. Our guide said that in the big cities a lot of the big companies donate funds to the orphanages because they mostly have children with special needs and it helps provide therapy and other medical, psychological and emotional needs.

After that, we visited YuYuan Park. The park itself is beautiful. It is surrounded by shops and crawling with people. We had lunch at McDonalds. Amanda has obviously eaten there before, probably with her foster family. She knew she wanted a hangbao (hamburger) and fries and asked for it before I could even show her the menu. One of the words I know.

Tonight we will go out for supper to a local Chinese restaurant. Tomorrow our guide will pick up the passports and certificates from Civil Affairs and we will be able to leave Shanghai for Guangzhou. Our flight doesn't leave, however until about 6:30 p.m. She said we'd probably not get to the White Swan hotel until about 11:30 tomorrow night.