I am 7 1/2 hours into a 15 hour flight as I type this. The kids have slept most of the time up until now, and since their internal time clocks tell them it's 6:45 in the morning, they have woken and are now becoming restless and want to play with their things, which is fine...it's why we brought them. We had a little dinner about an hour into the flight, and now we're over Japan I think...or Russia...it's hard to tell from the on-flight map.
A list of things:
I can feel my calves and ankles swelling to elephantine proportions.
Laina can sleep in any position.
I will never get used to turbulence.
Chinese romantic comedies require very little brain power and an extremely large amount of tolerance for squeaky, little, pretty, girls who aren't very smart.
Laina just spilled a cup of sprite on Min. This will not happen again...because Laina will now only get water.
I like Traditional Chinese music. I also enjoy watching Beijing Opera. I'm listening to some traditional music on the flight entertainment system. It's folk tunes set to a modern rhythm and using some synth sounds mixed in.
We are all packed in carry on sized luggage.
I forget how big I become in China. Not just "fat" big, but "tall" big. I can stand in the crowd and easily look over everyone's heads. I do get proportionally fatter, too. Mostly because I'm fatter.
Min has developed a little runny nose and I hope it doesn't develop into a full blown cold. These airplanes are flying germ missiles and hopefully her immune system will keep the wee beasties at bay. (I wonder if by typing "Flying germ missiles" and then posting it online if it will trigger something with the transportation authority. We will see.)
The girls have settled after a couple of laps around the plane and are quietly watching the movie or listening to music. Oh...now they're heading to the toilets together. Well...they will settle soon enough, or not...
Our first stop on our journey is the city of Nanjing. Things which are famous in this city-it is the site of the Nanjing Massacre. This incident happened in the 1940's I think. I don't have any resources to fact check, so I will just say it was the 40's. If it sounds interesting you can look it up on Wikipedia. I haven't been to the massacre site since 1998, and I hear they have updated it, excavated more of the mass graves and have displayed more artifacts. On this particular trip, we aren't going to go there. It's a little too intense for the kids, so we will give it a skip. Another famous site here is the mausoleum of Sun Yat Sen. He was a general in the army and helped to throw the Japanese out of China in the 40's. They have a great big temple like mausoleum that we may go to. Oh, and there's Purple Mountain, a park like place with areas to walk around, have a picnic and run around. On the first day here, I have the girls alone, since Jorg is having business meetings. I'm not sure what the girls and I will do. We may walk around and look at shops, we may take the metro somewhere, we may go to the mausoleum...I'm not sure.
Well, I am sleepy again, so I will turn off the lappy and get out my ipod and listen to someone talking me to sleep. Zzzzzz....
No comments:
Post a Comment