China arival....

It’s 4:34 in the morning and we are all awake!

The flight here fine in that fourteen hours in an enclosed box kind of way. Somehow our travel agent managed to get only Manuel an assigned seat, which meant that the kids and I were sitting separately. We also arrived at the airport to find that three of our four suitcases were too heavy so had to buy a new red monster suitcase in the gift shop. The $69 was cheaper than the overweight fees. There’s nothing quite like seeing your shampoo peanut butter, inhalers, bras, books, and deodorant flying around the airport. We were sure that someone would move once they took a look at the row but of course we were in economy plus and he was in steerage. The Chinese woman sitting net to us was fortunately quite charmed by the kids and gave Rebecca and gave her noodle eating lesson. The kids read their new kindle’s for much of the plane (thanks Joyce and papa) They also enjoyed watching the little map on the movie screen and “are we there yet” was quickly replaced by “we have 6,453 miles to go. Now we have 6, 325 miles to go etc…..” There was much excitement about flying over the north pole. At some point we decided it was tine to drug them and Benadryl was given to all. It seemed to have no effect on Eli other than to spin him into a mother of a 40 minute tantrum during which I gave him a second Benadryl He then fell asleep mid tantrum, as in standing on the floor and banging on the seat. I was slightly afraid that I’d overdosed him but he seemed to be breathing fine.

We are staying in a courtyard hotel. It’s fairly deep in in a Hutong, which are old neighborhood consisting of courtyard’s strung together. Guidebooks and Wikipedia tell me that they date back to the dynastic period and that many have been demolished. It is very peaceful, other than our kids waking everyone up yesterday by running around the courtyard. The practical implications are that cabs don’t drive in here and no one speaks any English. The local restaurants are “very authentic” and dinner number one was a complete and utter disaster featuring Jonathan screaming that he hates china, he wants to go home, he's never eating any food here etc....

Yesterday we spent the day with my cousin Jordan (a second cousin) and his wife. Rebecca is in love and spent the whole day flirting. It was a great but exhausting day featuring lunch, the forbidden city, a subway, a bus, the apple store, a shoe market, and a park. (the kids and Manuel skipped the errand parts) Jordan was a freshman at Brandeis when I taught there and he did at one point pick me up and toss me over his shoulder which I found not helpful to my authority. They took us to a delicious restaurant with some sort of porridge that Eli and Rebecca loved. Rebecca tried “nine new foods.” It helped that I promised the kids one m and m for every new food they tried. They bravely tried just about everything. We found Jonathan a corn pancake, which he liked and Jordan and his wife spun into some very complex negotiations in Chinese to get him plain noodles with nothing on them. We also went to the Forbidden City. Joanthan’s first remark was “it’s a pity they removed so much of the gold from the roofs during the Quing dynasty.” Rebecca explained that the carved animals were a sign of “wealth and prosperity” The second grade SOL’s are certainly paying of here. Unfortunately a few days ago some artifacts were stolen from the Forbidden City and many of the exhibits are closed or empty of jewels. This kids said “What’s the point of seeing the hall of heavenly peace if it doesn’t have anything in it…..”

Manuel took the kids back for a nap in the afternoon. Despite our lectures about the virtues of pushing through jet lag all three fell asleep and basically woke up to sleep eat some pizza. And yes we did go to a pizza place on our SECOND day in China. This was an attempt to appease thing 2 who barely woke up. The boys completely sleep ate…

Eli has no clue what is happening and woke up yesterday asking where the Subaru was how we’d get around without it. He loves the squat potties in restaurants and thinks we should get one at home. “this is willy gweat I just peed in the floor….” The kids are attracting a ton of attention which I thought they didn’t notice until Rebecca asked “how come all these people are staring at us all the time” We explained that we look different and that most Chinese people have only one kid. The kids are also getting touched a lot—lots of tactile admiration of their hair. So far they seem not especially bothered. Jonathan announced that he’s tired of meeting people we can’t talk to and both kids now want to learn Chinese. Eli thinks he knows Chinese and is perfectly happy talking to people in a mixture of English and what he imagines is Chinese. This is the first time in decades that I’ve been to a country where I understand zippo. And it is indeed disarming. The thing about being good at one Romance language is that all the others fall into place. So I think I will try and find us a student to teach us some Chinese when we get to the “garden of nice words.” I doubt we’ll get very good at it but it’ll give us something to do…