Xi'an Wall and Wild Goose Pagoda

Yesterday we visited the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an and walked along the city wall which is really the ancient fortress/lookout for the old part of the city. It is surrounded by a moat and then the new city springs up in skyscrapers all around it (although on the opposite side of the river you can see the extreme poverty). Talk about a clash of the old and new!

There was a guy flying a kite from the top of the city wall. I went over to take a picture and he handed me the kite. Then he took it away again because I wasn't doing a very good job. He made a point of not looking at me directly but clearly indicating - to nobody in particular - what I should have been doing.

Various Quirks

• If, for instance, you are sitting having dinner at a restaurant and you ask the server for something and they don't understand you, they will nod and say, "yeah, yeah, okay okay" and do a little bow. Then they will walk away and completely ignore you from then on out, pretending you don't exist.

• Muzak in China is worse than in America, if that is possible. In my mind, if you're in China you want to hear something remotely Oriental sounding. Maybe not Taeko drumming pounding a rythym through your meal exactly, but something a little more Asian for background music. But no. At the moment I can't think of all the names of songs we got to hear in ways I absolutely guarantee they were never intended (4 hours of sleep will do that to you). But two that come immediately to mind are "How sweet is your love" and "Like a Virgin" by Madonna.

• People love to stare at us...but only if they think we're not watching them. I'm not exactly sure whether people like to stare at us because we're Americans, we dwarf them (on our inner-country flight Jason looked like the main character from the Incredibles, wedged into his seat with shoulders/arms scrunched in), or we wear Boston Red Sox hats while climbing on things we're supposed to stay off of. Jason has pulled a couple fast ones on a few people he knew were watching us; he acted like he had no idea they were there, then he'd whip his head around and stare straight at them. Pretty fun to watch them pretend we're invisible.

• Asian people don't pull any punches. I mean that literally. On our flight from Beijing to Xi'an yesterday I thought Jason was going to have to go jujitsu on everybody. It was a very FULL flight and we were almost the only non-Asian folks on it. The guy who came to sit down next to Jason was extremely friendly initially. "Ni hao" this and "shei shei" that and all smiles and happy nodding. But as soon as he put his seat in the reclining position, the man behind him made some sort of comment. I'm not sure what he said (since it was Mandarin) but there were plenty of nonverbal cues that whatever it was, it was unpleasant; probably a suggestion that the man in front please put his seat in the upright position. Well the formerly friendly neighbor exploded, punctuating the airspace between them (and all the rest of us) with a frightening vitriolic spew of verbage. Back and forth it went between the two of them. When eventually the Friendly-Neighbor-Turned-Cage-Fighter settled back down, the Rear Guard would mutter some disparaging comment under his breath, and up shot Cage Fighter once again. On and on it went. I thought Cage Fighter was going to take out the flight attendant when she intervened, but eventually the storm settled.

• Everyone on that flight ignored the flight attendants. Wouldn't turn off their cell phones if they didn't want to, would argue, pester, not put their seatbacks up when told. And of course, nearly break into fist fights. Always a pleasure.

Oh my...

NOTE: This post is out of order. The event about which you are reading occured on Tues. evening, after our first full day in China. After reading this post, we hope you will understand that our first dinner experience in China took some time to even remotely begin processing.

I'm not sure I can find appropriate words for Tuesday evening's culinary adventure, but I'll try...

First, I'm going to describe the feeling we had during the...how shall I say it? Ah yes, the absolute horror show of a dinner. You know that surreal feeling you get when you witness something in front of you going horribly, horribly wrong, but there's nothing you can do about it? Take that and add to it the knowledge that you were in actuality the one doing something horribly, horribly wrong. And you should have done something to prevent it. But you didn't. And you made it worse. Over and over again.

Before I share with you what happened in this car crash of a dinner, I want to apologize to all of you Americans who have gone before us and been wonderful examples of grace and poise. Your reputation is now trashed. And to all of you Americans coming to China after us: again I must apologize, because now all of China, or at least the wait staff of Calif. Shabu Shabu believes that you as citizens of the United States are blathering idiots.

It all started off innocently enough: we were hungry and decided to eat at one of the restaurants in the hotel. Calif. Shabu Shabu looked nice and swanky and - most importantly to those who are hungry - close by.

The first warning that I should not be doing this came before I could even open my mouth. The hostess walked up to me and said something in broken English that I assumed was just a greeting or advice that the restaurant was not part of the hotel, and therefore not free to guests. In retrospect, I now realize that she was either saying 'We're closing' (as the restaurant was completely empty save for the two of us), or more likely 'You don't belong here'.

Either way, I graciously ignored her wave-offs and smiled, nodded my head and said, 'Yes, two of us.'

With a slight sigh and shrug as if to say 'OK, your funeral', the very nice lady sat us all by ourselves in a corner and stood there. Staring. Then another woman came over. And stood there. And stared. Then one of the two asked us if we knew what to order.

As there was only one menu in front of us (another BIG hint to run, don't walk, to the exit) and Em and I hadn't even looked at it yet, we smiled and opened the menu and began to slowly look over the selection.

At this point, the waitress leaned over my shoulder and pointed to a few things, machine-gunned a few partially English comments, flipped each page of the menu and did the same thing all over again. Again I should have listened harder to her. I'm pretty sure she was trying to be graceful to the American baboon and make some recommendations, but again I ignored the warning and said we'd need a couple of minutes, please.

As we were left alone, Em and I took a closer look at our surroundings. We noticed several indications of stormy weather ahead all around us. First, we were alone in the restaurant. Totally, completely alone. Second, there were two sets of chopsticks placed in front of each of us. Now I'm the guy who still has no idea why we need both a fork and a spoon at the dinner table, and although I can with some measure of skill wield a pair of chopsticks, two pair were - and still are - completely out of my realm of experience and understanding. The only difference dinner made to this situation is that now several members of Shabu Shabu know it as well.

The third thing we noticed as we surveyed our surroundings is that placed in front of each one of us were these two, um, contraptions made of either stainless steel or silver; quite beautiful really, but their function remained totally beyond me other than that. They looked like something in between an incense brazier and a bowl. Then I noticed the burner beneath. It was like those cans of napalm you get with your pu pu dinner back home. Now I knew fire was involved in our dinner experience, but not to what extent. Oh boy.

Now warning bells were going off in my head, but being typically male, I just thought of them as a sign of weakness, and as such, were something to be ignored....stupid, stupid man....

Emily and I then opened the menus (excuse me, menu - we had to crowd over the table and crane our necks so we could both get a view of the thing at the same time) and took a look. We would have been better off telling the waitress the least desirable yet edible (?) parts of creatures we could think of, because that seemed to be our choices anyway, and at least we wouldn't have been delusional with the thought that a menu would have something we would actually want to eat.

I won't tell you folks the items on the menu because 1) I don't think you'd believe me, and 2) I feel dirty even saying them. To order such items would feel like uttering a string of profanities, and my mom didn't raise me that way. Just use your imagination and rest assured that whatever it was you just imagined, it was there.

After some queasy perusing of the menu we did come across a few things we might actually enjoy eating. Hot and spicy soup for each of us, "beef" tips for me and vegetable noodles for Emily.

Satisfied with our choices, I smiled at the ever-hovering waitress and indicated what we wanted by pointing.

It wasn't that simple, of course.

After placing what I thought was our order, the waitress stood there looking expectantly at us while we did the same at her. Finally, she went though each of the five pages and waved her hand across each in succession and with broken English, asking us what we wanted from that page. Her act was convincing enough that we felt compelled to oblige, so we did.

So in addition to the food above, we ordered another "beef" item, spicy sauce (I'd pay for that later), some types of mushrooms (if you know me, you know that mushrooms are at the bottom of my list of foods to eat even with a gun pointed at my head; but then again, I never thought someone might expect me to eat some of those other menu items either, so, yea, mushrooms!), and leafy vegetable. Yep, that's how it was listed, 'leafy vegetable'.

Satisfied at last, our waitress went off to place our order. Em and I looked at each other with a mixture of feelings, relief that that part was over and stark fear for what lay ahead of us...

Then I noticed 'them'.

By 'them' I 'm referring to the group of 4 to 6 ladies, all restaurant employees, standing quietly off to the side about 20 feet away, looking at us and talking in Chinese. They didn't seem upset we were the only ones at a late dinner that evening. They weren't laughing at the silly foreigners trying to navigate the culinary waters of Shabu Shabu either.

No, it was more like they were expectant, but not in the way a restaurant staff would be when a food critic comes in to dine. It was more like a what-are-they-going-to-do-next' look. Well, their guess was as good as mine.

At this point, Emily got the giggles over the situation, and it was only made worse at my attempts to look like I was still in control. Mine was the more ridiculous of the reactions. I looked at her like the child that didn't know any better how to cope with this predicament, and she did the same to me, then broke out in even more uncontrollable laughter. I needn't have worried about 'them' overhearing Emily though. When she gets laughing this hard, she stops breathing and thereby stops making any noise. She just shakes and turns red. A lot.

Then the food came...Little bowls of spices (I recognized chopped scallions and hot peppers among them) were placed in front of us. A big plate of what I took to be mushroom bits was them placed between us.

Then what looked like one of those big meat and cheese platters you'd see at parties was put down, but there was no cheese, just all meat. Then another plate of meat was put down: this one smaller and more prepared looking.

Then a small plate of green pasta was placed furthest away from the rest of the food. And finally the leafy vegetable. Well, it was more like a small vase with leaves of romaine lettuce sticking out of it, looking like it was prepared by some ikebana master. It looked like we'd caught a break - we could probably muddle through this dinner without too much apparent ineptitude, but once again, I was sadly mistaken...

Because out came the fire.

Stainless steel bowls full of what looked like broth were brought out and placed on each of our stands and then the napalm underneath was set ablaze. The waitress, with a satisfied smile, backed away to join 'them'.

Emily and I just looked at each other. All mirth was gone from her face at the direness of the moment. My seriousness was replaced by a cold, cold sinking feeling deep in the pit of my stomach. I hadn't felt this way since...no, wait; I've never felt this way. Terror. Sheer inescapable terror.

Then the adrenaline dump came. For those of you who don't know what I mean by this, let me explain. When faced with imminent danger, either real or perceived, the human creature has what's known as a 'fight or flight' response. Adrenaline courses through your system, bringing you to your most primitive state, where either you'll fight like a cornered animal, or run so fast as to put Jesse Owens to shame. I began to sweat and twitch, my eyes darting left, then right, breathing shallow, trying to find a way out of this embarrassment. I might have even begun to whimper. It's all so foggy now...

At this point Emily came to her senses and suggested that we might want to ask for help. Before she could even finish her recommendation, I cut her off with a feral grunt.

"No!"

I would not let these people do any worse to me. In my animal state, I recognized the women as the enemy: those responsible for my terror, my pain. I begun to plan how I could take each one out efficiently and quietly and escape unharmed. The bodies wouldn't be found until I was long gone.

Oh wait, I'd have to take Emily into account. She's going to slow me down. Better perhaps that she not suffer any longer... it would be better this way.

She must have caught the rabid mongoose look in my eye, my sudden calm at the resolve before me, because like a lightning flash, she brought me back to myself.

"Jason!"

Shaking my head, I looked up at her and realized the only real way out of this was to swallow pride and accept defeat. I motioned to the waitress. Eagerly she hurried over. She had no idea how close she came to the end of her days. With simple words and gestures, I tried to convey that we had no idea how to go about eating our meal. She smiled kindly, and with a slight cooing noise a mother might make to a screaming child, she walked off and returns a moment later with napkins. Then walked back to 'them.'

Napkins?!?

Those women! They knew what they were doing to us and must have decided to up the ante and see what our reaction would be to this insane experience by bringing a random variable into the equation (napkins) and then measure our response.

Or maybe she just thought I wanted more napkins.

I had to take more drastic and humbling steps, evidently. So with the sigh of a man going to the gallows, I pushed my chair back, stood, and approached 'them' with head down, eyes averted. Perfect submission. If I were a dog, I would have rolled over and exposed my belly to them, but in this place, they might have actually mistaken me for one and served me for dinner the next evening. The waitress saw me coming and did not approach. She made me come to her, to make my humiliation complete and public before 'them'.

Just before I reached the group however, our waitress must have felt some small measure of pity and met me half way between our table and the group. Again I tried to let her know we needed her help. I briefly considered a bribe, but knowing the situation a little bit, I'd have probably needed to pay them all off. As it turned out, we finally came to an understanding and she followed me back to our table to give us some much needed assistance.

First, she gestured to the more prepared of meats and indicated that they were to be eaten on their own. Then she took the spice and begun to add them to a small bowl of what looked to be soy sauce sitting off to the side. First the hot peppers: almost all of them. I think I saw smoke puffing up from the bowl after all that heat added.

Then she picked up the scallions and paused, looking concerned, as if she realized that she'd give us enough peppers to set our pile of napkins ablaze just from their proximity; but no, it wasn't that.

"You OK with scallions?"

Oh, how kind; burn us from the inside with fire peppers, but show remorse that we might get a bit gassy with too much onions. Like we'd be able to even taste them anyway.

"Yes, very much. Thank you."

To this, she added a dash (one or two pieces) of scallions and then added what looked like ginger powder to the sauce.

Setting this aside, she grabbed the outside-most set of chopsticks and added some mushrooms, 'leafy vegetable' and some of the platter meat (by the way, this meat was raw) to our stew pot, which was by this time boiling. After ten seconds or so, she took out the mushrooms, dipped them in the fire sauce, placed them on my plate, and did the same to the beef, now medium rare in state. And finally the 'leafy, now wilted vegetable'. Simple. Then she indicated that with our second set of chopsticks, we should eat.

Turning, she left.

With a sigh of relief, Em and I picked up or chopsticks and begun to eat, and then very quickly put them back down again.

If you've ever been to the circus, no doubt you've seen those guys who take the flaming torch and place it in their mouths: you know, the fire eaters. I'll let you in on a secret, they don't eat the fire, they just pretend to. For good reason. Fire is bad. Emily and I just ate fire. Fire is bad.

The sweat began to pour down our faces and the water at our table quickly disappeared. One bite down, countless more to go. Gosh, it's a good thing we didn't have too many scallions in the sauce.

We'd made it through about 1/3 of the food and our waitress (thankfully) returned to our table to refill our waters. Before she could set my glass down, I snatched it from her hand and drank it, indicating she could fill it again. As she finished with the water, I pointed to the noodles and made a questioning gesture.

'Those are last" she said, and went back to the herd.

We continued eating. As a side note, I have to let you know one of the lesser known side effects of eating a lot of hot food. You begin to enter this semi-euphoric state, similar to having a bit too much drink, in which you begin to feel light headed and a bit imbalanced. I only mention this because it was also affecting my coordination as well. Half of the food I picked back out of the pot, got dropped onto my plate before I could get it into my mouth.

Evidently much time and effort was put into the creation of these particular plates at the restaurant, because the angles were such that any food spilled caused the sauce to splatter at exactly the right angle to unerringly hit one's shirt every time.

By the end of the night, both Emily and I looked like gunshot victims, except we smelled suspisciously of soy and peppers....

We were full - full of food and full of Shabu Shabu. But as we looked down, Emily and I realized that we'd barely dented the mass of meat and mushroom before us. Now...we were full, but one thing we were not was wasteful. So on we went.

Two bites later and we couldn't take it any longer. Plates were pushed away and napkins piled on top; the worldwide symbol of achieving fullness of near combustable proportions.

Fortunately, our waitress recognized it and promptly took our plates away; or should I say, she took Emily's plate. Mine she left. To this day I still don't know why.

As we waited for the check, Emily and I joked about the near disaster we'd had and how we were happy that it was all over with.

Then our waitress came back with a new plate and set it in front of Emily, the universal sign that one is not done eating. Emily looked deflated, at least as much as someone who's at critical mass, gastrointestinally speaking, can be, and began to slowly put food onto her plate. Her ploy was simple: put a little bit of food on the plate and then push the plate back... like it had once been a full plate and now was nearly empty.

Instantly I recognized the flaw in her plan though. Reaching across the table with one chopstick, I moved the meat and mushrooms around a bit and mashed them together. Now it looked realistically like she'd put up a valliant effort. Our waitress fell for it, hook line and sinker.

This time all of the plates were cleared away and Em and I pushed our chairs back and thankfully awaited the check. Sadly, there was yet one more hurdle to overcome; and in our state, jumping hurdles might prove physically impossible.

Dessert.

Yes, dessert -- which I never recalled ordering -- was served, but fortunately it was only some fruit, so we managed to tackle it with slight moaning and groaning, which may or may not have been overheard.

After we finally paid our bill and waddled across the lobby of the hotel, Emily and I faced yet one last tough decision: stairs or elevator back to our 10th floor room? Both held perils of equally dire consequences: we might overload the elevator with our newly created mass and cause a sudden plunge, ending in our certain demise. But if we tried to tackle the stairs we'd surely have a pair of heart attacks long before we'd climbed all 1o flights. So we decided to risk the elevator, and as you can tell from this blog, we made it.

Though the elevator did shake a bit on the long way up.

Beijing Day 2

OK, so everyone knows that this is what the Great Wall is supposed to look like:

What most of you may not know is that for 99.9% of the time, climbing the great wall really looks more like this:

...and that's because for the entire exhausting climb, you really can't afford to look around to enjoy the view because you risk tripping on the unevenly-spaced steps and tumbling to a humiliatingly ignoble death. Or possibly being trampled from behind by the masses trailing in the wake of your feeble footsteps. Or slamming unexpectedly into the poor bloke who's stopped abruptly in his tracks, gasping along with you in perfect harmony.

From afar, one inescapably feels the overpowering awe, beauty & wonder of the Wall, the only manmade structure visible from space.

From anear, one inescapably feels like a triathalon followed by a marathon would have been the wiser choice:

Things improved once we made it (almost) to the highest point of this particular section of the Great Wall. We decided we'd stop one watchtower short of the actual highest point. Call us slackers, but honestly, after you've gotten that far and see the view at that height, another couple hundred yards of burning pain just doesn't make that much difference. And of course there's always the return DOWN that stands ready and waiting to do you in.

We also went to see the Ming Tombs, where 13 of the emperors are buried. This was probably the highpoint of the day, believe it or not. We learned all sorts of things about the history of the emperors and their beliefs in the afterlife.

We also learned that when the emperor died a couple of his concubines were offered in sacrifice. This is where they ended up:

That beautiful huge building behind me is just the gravestone marker for one of the emperors. Talk about money to burn. And that's me standing at the door to the afterlife and crossing over it, hoping for the best.

We also visited a Jade museum. Here is our guide showing us a "family ball" - one solid block of jade that has been carved into three balls that spin inside each other.

And this is my best Happy Buddha impersonation:

Tomorrow we leave for Xian. I think most of the day is traveling so I don't know if you'll hear from us. Then Friday we'll visit the Terracotta Warriors and see what those old guys have been up to lately.

Day 1 in Beijing

China is beautiful!!! We had a blast today, going to the Forbidden Temple, the Summer Palace, Tienamen Square, a pearl shop, a silk market, a tea shop (yummm).

Jason and I were the only people with our guide, so we got to do whatever we wanted, which for me primarily consisted of wandering off to take a huge number of photos. I tried to pare it down a bit, but I think there's still gonna be a ton that end up on the blog. Ah well... What can you do when everywhere you turn there are such beautiful and ancient artifacts?

Being blonde and blue-eyed, I got a lot of stares and quite a few requests for my photograph to be taken. At first I thought I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing, because all of a sudden there would be a volley of explosive words directed my way as they headed straight toward me. But no, I wasn't in a forbidden place in the Forbidden Temple. I was just American. Between that and having a personal tour guide/chauffer, I felt like a celebrity. Jason was a little jealous, so later that afternoon when some solitary soul pleaded for his photograph with HIM, he got all excited and wanted me to document it. So you won't see any photos of me with my assorted Asian entourages, but you will see Jason with his lone fan.



In the Summer Palace there were all these cool old trees and rocks. I'm sure they have more sophisticated names, but "gnarled trees" and "holey rocks" will have suffice for my narrative purposes here. I had to get my picture taken, crawling all over this neat rock formation. Jason didn't think I should be climbing all around the thing, but I was having fun and my papparazziism was in full gear. Unfortunately, as soon as I climbed back down, what do you suppose I saw right behind me? This HUGE placard that said ABSOLUTELY NO CLIMBING ON ARTIFACTS.

Fortunately for me, this time there was no security officers around. (There was a near-incident on the bridge that involved a guard, that famous photo of Mao, and my desire for a picture, but that's another story....)

There are these humongous red doors that have nine golden doorknobs that run across horizontally and nine more that run vertically (nine being the number of power and perfection for the Chinese). People are really superstitious - everyone passing by had to rub the doorknobs as they walked by. The knobs at arm level are all shiny, the finish completely worn off by the 20,000 visitors that pass by each day. Oh, and don't step on the threshold as you walk through. Legend says the evil spirits can jump on your pantleg and gain entrance along with you.

Check out the huge unevenness of this brick courtyard. Our guide told us that the top layer of bricks goes horizontal but there's a second layer underneath that runs vertically (to prevent enemies from tearing up the road/courtyard).

Apparently I got a little over-eager on the door knobs and latches that are all around these old palace courtyards. I have tons more of similar ones, but I'll limit it to this one.

Well, we're gonna think about dinner and an early bedtime tonight. Tomorrow we walk the wall and visit the Ming tombs!

Asian Invasion!

We crazy kids have arrived, safe and sound!!!

After leaving Logan (Boston) at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, we finally arrived at Destination Beijing around midnight Monday night... Long. Very, very long. (Considering how stir crazy I was getting, I'm already not looking forward to the return with a 4-year-old...)

The last leg of our trip was delayed by 2 hours (plane brake lines weren't working, so I take it as a very good thing that they kicked us off the plane and had us reboard a different one.) But we were so travel weary and yet hyped up, it made it hard to sleep last night. Definitely betting sleep will come with a heavy hand tonight...

It's about 5:15 a.m. Tues (that would make it 5:15 p.m. Monday for all those back home) and I'm sitting here in our hotel room in Beijing showered, dressed and ready to see a big wall. But our guide isn't meeting us until 8:15, so breakfast first....

But I've been dying to blog (we couldn't do it in Tokyo) to let everyone know we made it! Wild.

Because we arrived around midnight, we haven't seen much of anything to take a decent picture of. And with our bleary bloodshot eyes, pictures of us definitely don't count. But we'll take tons today and download them when we get back later this afternoon.

Big huge hugs to everyone who prayed and sent us off with words of encouragement. An extra special big hugs to our moms & dads....and the rest of our "families" scattered near and far! Love you all and thanks for your unwavering support!!!

Watching the minute hand...

The waiting really is the hardest part. One of my church friends was saying yesterday how awful it is to have to anticipate. It’s ridiculously annoying.

And we have 6 more days of it to go.

There’s nothing productive that you can do about any of the unknowns. Stewing and worrying about what might (or might not) be won’t make anything any easier. Trying to anticipate it just makes my head spin.

On the other hand, when you’re feeling incredibly excited and completely energized, you have to contain yourself because you remember you still have 6 days to go and people look at you funny when you giggle and dance about and forget to answer their questions in a straightforward manner. It’s a no-win.

Jason and I were chatting this morning as we drove in to work together, and I kept randomly coming up with a myriad of small worries. One after another, all sorts of tiny negatives kept popping into my head. Mind you, not one of these things was a serious problem or potential disaster; just a string of my telltale, random quirkynesses.

Finally he said, "Emily, do you think that maybe – just maybe – your low-level anxiety is kicking into gear, heading out onto the open road, obsessively scanning the horizon for any and all appearance of a storm cloud?"

I said, "Yeah, I think even my anxiety is starting to get stressed out."

Jason’s right: it’s high time to pull that anxiety scout into the garage for a while and take JOY and EXCITEMENT and ENERGY out for a spin…

Look, Ma, no dishes!

We couldn't do a complete remodel in the kitchen, but we decided to spruce the room up a bit. We are so excited with how awesome our kitchen patching-caulking-repainting project came out, so we thought we'd share some pics with you, our favorite reader(s).

I've artfully orchestrated it such that you will all labor under the delusion that I am a marvelous housekeeper. A more accurate reality would be to say that my kitchen in this state of cleanliness and superb organization is such an anomaly that it was deserving of photographic documentation strictly for posterity's sake.

Truth be told, Jason is often the one who does the dishes and laundry during the week. Is that shameful to admit?

Not only is Jason full of domestic handyness, but I will admit -- since it's Sunday and I'm in the confessional mode -- he is also my resident interior decorator.

Back in the fall when we started our very first remodeling project (the bathroom), he and our contractor friend Dylan went to Home Depot to pick up building supplies. But since they were already there (I was later told), Jason decided to grab all the fixtures as well (sink, tub, shower, etc). He was on his way to checkout when Dylan took him aside.

"Dude."

"What?" An oblivious Jason.

"You sure you want to do this? Y'know....without checking with her first."

In a bold move, Jason said, "Yeah. It'll be good. She'll like it."

"Dude."

"What?"

Dylan sighed. Since Jason and I've been married slightly longer than he has, what could he say? He shrugged his shoulders. "Duly warned."

In full confidence Jason pressed on: "Duly noted."

The verdict?

It looked sweet! (Go back to January's post to see pics for yourself). Jason really did have an eye for this redecorating thing.

So what do you suppose happened the next time he went out and came home with more new household fixtures, this time for the living room?

Good ol' Doubting Thomasina here looked inside the various Home Depot, Target and Lowes bags, raised her eyebrows and promptly raised all sorts of grief. Such-and-such definitely would not work; this doohickey was highly dubious; that thingamajig was, well, eh at best. On and on I went with how I just didn't think his choices were going to work. Harumph.


You'd think once I'd witnessed what he could do in redecorating the bathroom I'd be slightly more acquiescent and at least willing to hear him out. But you have to understand, most of the sides of Jason I get to see involve wrist locks, bacon, arm bars, steak, takedowns, roast beef, jujitsu grappling, spam, or some other highly testosterine-driven or artery-clogging personnae. This is a whole new -- dare I say sensitive? -- side to my man that is unfolding. Maybe I should re-introduce tofu.

So when we went to pick up curtains yesterday and within 45 seconds of scanning the aisles (after I had been there for at least 10 minutes feeling overwhelmed) Jason pulled up something that wasn't really in our new kitchen color scheme, this time I didn't bat an eye.

I think I'm learning.

We're not ignoring you...

Just a quick post to let you know about how to "post a comment" on our blog because some people have written us lovely missives that have instantaneously vanished into cyberspace without Jason or me having the chance to peruse your prose.

What's happening is that many of you have been getting e-mailed versions of our blog posts delivered to your inbox, but some of you are then trying to post a comment while you're there in your e-mail.

No can do. If you want to respond, you must go directly to our blogspot and enter your comments there. I know, I know. It's an extra step. But I assure you the opportunity to converse with moi and enjoy my scintillating wit will be so worth it. :)

Also, I know we haven't written in the last few days.... we've been foolish enough to decide to patch and repaint our kitchen since it was the only room downstairs that didn't get a complete makeover. It was looking rather shabby in comparison and, to be honest, confessed to feeling rather left out. There's nothing like an emotional kitchen to guilt one.

Besides it's FUN to cram your few remaining weeks before embarking to China chock full of "minor house projects." (If you look closely, you can see I'm giving you my best poker face.)

We thought some basic TLC would not be overly time-consuming (foolish mortals!) and might give a bit of a facelift (happily, true!). It's actually working! We didn't think it'd actually come out this swell! Hopefully I can upload some pictures later...

Travel Plans Booked!

We have booked our China shindig! For those interested, here’s how it’ll go (or some close approximation thereof, because when do things ever run smoothly and on time?):

Sun, April 27 leave Boston at 9:00 am/arrive Beijing (eventually) at 9:25 pm on 4/28

Mon, April 28–Thurs, May 1: four days in BEIJING
We’ll see the Great Wall and Ming Tombs, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and Summer Palace. Then on May 1 we leave in the afternoon for Xian:

Thurs, May 1–Sat, May 3: XIAN
We’ll enjoy a full-day tour of terra-cotta warriors at Qin Tomb complex, see Xian’s massive City Wall, the Drum Tower, Bell Tower and Big Goose Pagoda.

Xian is about 6 hours from Zhengzhou (where we will meet Jesse Yong) but there are no flights, so we get to take a train ride for $30. We are VERY excited about this, because that means we get to see the countryside, relax, and just decompress from our adventures before we meet our son.

The train leaves Sat, May 3 at 2:30 in the afternoon and arrives in Zhengzhou at 9:30 p.m. So from there we’ll go directly to our hotel. Supposedly, we are to meet Jesse Yong on Monday, which means we’d have Sunday free. But I know many times people have arrived on what was supposed to be “the day before” they were to meet their child and discovered the child is already there at the hotel, ready and waiting (and in most cases screaming) for them. We’ll hope that’s not the case, at least the screaming and wailing part.

Jesse Yong will either be brought to our hotel or to the Civil Affairs office in that city. I wonder just how scared he will be and I pray that God would put His hand of peace and assurance on his little heart. Such a life change, something most of us have never experienced. What survivors these kids are! Wow. I really am overwhelmed for him. He may never have even been in a car before…

We don’t know how much he will have been told or if he’s been in any way prepared for this huge change. He may literally have been tucked into the car and told about his new parents on the long drive over. And here he will be, hours from the people and place he knows and plunked down in a new city with new strange faces…

We will spend the next few days doing a little sight seeing but also waiting on lots of paperwork for Jesse’s passport, etc. I know we’ve said this before, but SERIOUSLY there’s a lot of paperwork involved in adoption. So if you’re feeling green today, plant a tree on behalf of us.

On Fri, May 9 we head to Guangzhou where we’ll do lots of fun things and shopping and sightseeing. And there are lots of Starbucks to keep us energized. We have our Consulate Appointment Mon, May 12 and our oath swearing Tues, May 13. We head back home Wed, May 14 at 8:20 a.m. to arrive (eventually) in Boston at 6:55 p.m.

It will be a wave of relief and comfort, knowing we are HOME and all is well again. We’ll be safe and secure in our familiar surroundings once again. But Jesse Yong will feel displaced, confused by the language and the culture and the food, away from those he knows and loves, and those who loved him.

He’ll feel like we did in China, except for him it’ll be permanent. There will be no going back; this is his forever family and his new life. Jesse Yong’s Chinese name means “courage,” and I know his caregiver called him that for a reason. We know he’s a survivor. I would go so far as to say I think my little boy is the hero of this China adventure.

Godspeed, my courageous little one, on this journey that lies ahead. We can’t do it for you, but we’ll be there to hold your hand.