Small World

Tonight we attended an Autumn Moon Festival through Culture Essentials. This is the company that is providing tutoring for Alana. Alana's tutor was there and she was thrilled! She wanted to sit by John, talk to John, eat with John -- you get the picture! I tried to get her to play with some of the other little girls there, but she just wanted to hang with the adults. Not sure what that was about.

Anyway, it is just so funny how many connections we seem to be forming. We found our way to Culture Essentials through Meg, who we first met at Collin's school. She works for CHI and our agency happens to be letting Culture Essentials use their office space to provide a Mandarin language class to a few CHI families. Well, we are at their Autumn Moon Festival and in walks a former co-worker of mine from years ago. I worked with Kevin for years before I stayed home full-time. He lives about a mile from us, but I haven't run into him in at least two years and probably closer to three. We talked for quite a while tonight and I found out his wife's family is from the Beijing area and his family is from a city near Shanghai (close to where Alana's orphanage is). He is friends with some of the people at Culture Essentials and he and his oldest daughter stopped by the get together. We swapped e-mail addresses and we are possibly going to get our families together and go out for real Chinese food in KC. He knows of places were actual Chinese families eat actual Chinese food! Not the Americanized Chinese food we are used to! =) I would be so happy if I could get something like the Dim Sum food I had in Guangzhou. Anyway, it was so nice to meet an old acquaintance. He and his wife have a daughter in 10th grade and also have a 3-year-old. She will likely be in the grade just between Dylan and Alana, but they will all be in the same Elementary school.

There was also another family at the get together who we'd seen a couple of times before, but had never met. They got up at our very first CHI meeting to show off their beautiful second daughter from China. Then at the meeting that we were welcoming Alana, the husband was giving a father's day speech. They have a 4.5 year old and 2 year old, so we may end up getting together for play dates in the future.

One more kind of strange thing at the meeting. There was a family with a little girl who had only been home one month. She had these little baby shoes on they bought in China. We were sitting behind them and I noticed that the bottom of the shoes had "Xinyi" printed on them. I'm not sure if that is a brand in China or if it means something else besides "happy heart", but I thought it was so strange to see her Chinese name of the bottom of someone's shoes. It was just an evening full of strange connections. It felt really good though. I feel like we are starting to be a part of the China adoption community, and more importantly, the Chinese community here in KC.