Thursday October 7, 2004

Last things first.

Well folks, that’s about it. Right now it is 10:00 P.M. here in scenic Guangzhou and everyone else but me is asleep in sonorous anticipation of our 5 A.M. wake-up call. I’m even less thrilled with that than you can imagine, but we have little choice in the matter as our bus leaves for the airport at 6 and Dorothy will need that whole hour to finish packing as I catch my last few minutes of precious slumber. I only hope that I will be able to sleep on the plane with the sound of two kids bothering my wife for the 15 ½ hours we will be en-route to Newark.

I never thought that my final destination after 15 ½ hours in the air would be Newark, New Jersey. Trust me, I am duly shamed.

Our total travel time tomorrow, from the time we leave the hotel until the time we put our key in the front door of Chez Congiusta will be just about 24 hours. Whatever happened to all of this stuff I keep hearing about supersonic intercontinental travel cutting hours off air travel times? And why don’t they get cracking on that Star Trek transporter thingamajig for that matter. Doesn’t anyone really appreciate what we are about to go through tomorrow?

Sorry about all of that but sometime it helps to talk your fears out and I have an irrational fear of traveling for a whole calendar day with 2 cranky kids. It’s called painintheasskidsaphobia. I am thinking of starting a support group if I survive the trip back.

Things to do in China when you’re dead tired.

Today, other than try to bury our fears about the trip home tomorrow in a very dark and hidden part of our souls, we spent the day pretty much on our own. Matthew has been a little under the weather so Dorothy and I took turns taking Aelex out while the other person stayed in the room in an often vain attempt to keep Matthew fed and reasonably healthy for tomorrows ordeal.

When we first got Aelex, I had never seen a child eat like her. She was a bottomless pit who would literally eat for hours on end. Matthew one ups her in that department with the added bonus of whining the whole entire time a spoon or bottle is not crammed into his gaping maw. Good lord the kid is relentless. Yet I digress.

So I spent my portion of the day (when not feeding my son shredded newspaper, the only sustenance we can afford now that Dorothy has basically finished shopping) in either the play room or in the pool. Sometimes, I even brought Aelex with me.

The only official appointment we had was with the distinguished Linda this afternoon to get our children’s travel visas, then have a group picture taken, finally followed by a community feed. All basically went well with only a minor hitch in the visa process which was immediately corrected by the eminent Linda. I would explain exactly what the holdup was, but I wouldn’t want to confuse you with all of the technical terms and jargon involved in the procedure. In other words, I have absolutely no idea.

Regardless, our kids are all papered up and ready to hop the really, really, really red-eye back to the States tomorrow. It has been another most excellent adventure here in China and we leave with one of the greatest gifts we could ever get anywhere… my very own copy of Mao’s Little Red Book! I am so psyched! Oh, and we also have another kid with us.

Seriously though, we wouldn’t have been back here a second time if we weren’t totally thrilled with how everything turned out the first time. We now consider ourselves even luckier than the first time (something I had no inkling was even possible) because this time we have yet another child, the irrepressible — and very hungry — Matthew.

The entry for tomorrow is definitely not going to be posted until sometime Sunday at the earliest. I am seriously going to try and get Dorothy to write something so you all can get a much more sensible version of the events of the past few weeks. I will also, supply my own wise-ass summation just because it’s my web site and I can do whatever the damn well hell I please on it. Thanks to everyone who either e-mailed us or signed Matthew’s Guestbook. It meant a lot to us to read you kind words and to know that you were thinking of us on our trip. And to all of our so-called friends who couldn’t be bothered to so much as drop us a line, you are dead to us. So the next time you see me, just keep on walking…

Dreading the Chinese wake-up call torture…