By the time you, gentle readers, are reading these words, I should be over the North Pole.

Originally, we'd hoped to fly out of San Francisco to Hong Kong, do a little bit of cultural & time-zone decompression in the once-Westernized city, then head up to Chongqing. But compressed travel time leads to compressed choices -- because of the Trade Fair, it's far less expensive to fly into Beijing (not Hong Kong or Guangzhou, where the Fair is), and to linger a few extra days at the end of the trip and fly out on May 1, the international Labor Day holiday (because for one thing, the Trade Fair's over, and for another thing, it's always cheaper to fly on a holiday rather than right before... more

So, we've just gotten home from dropping Daughter off with Nai-nai & Ye-ye for the duration. All three seemed utterly delighted.

I've gotten Skype installed on the laptop and the home computers for communication with the rest of the family while we're overseas.

And are we packed? Like heck we're packed.

As long as we're on that pre-dawn plane tomorrow.....

These are the drugstore-type things I know I'm taking:

Vitamin E oil. For a while, you could get this at Costco. It's great for anything skin-related -- cuts, itches, chapped lips, whatever. Tiger Balm. You can get this at most Asian markets. It's good for aching muscles, but also has a kind of Vick's Vap-O-Rub quality to it that's not half bad when you're congested. Airborne. Fizzy tablets like citrus-flavored Alka-Seltzer, only with the power to kill sickness before it sets in. I *always* get colds, and this stuff works. I'm sucking it back like crazy right now because The Boy (age 12) is just getting over a nasty bout with pneumonia, and I...... more

Today, the weather in Chongqing is much like it is here, only about 10 degrees colder. 63 and rainy. It's around midnight there now. During the day, it's about like it is here: mid-70s, humid.

On Wednesday, June 15, 2005, though, it was hot and close, with fog but no rain. The haze lifted twice, around 10:00 AM and... more

Welcome, gentle reader, to the ninth report in the Troublesome Fictions series, wherein grant dissects the stories that he once loved (and possibly still loves), but that make him feel weird now that he's an adoptive parent.

This time, yes, it's geek confessional hour again. We travel to the sun source of martial arts, the remote North Korean village of Sinanju, and the musty, romantic shelves of the local used bookstores, where for 50 cents, you could get around three hours of diversion at the hands... more

I'm a little disturbed by this Seed Magazine article on some pretty amazing new scientific discoveries.

It's about a woman, Professor Elizabeth Gould, who proved that our brains keep growing new cells and, more importantly, forging new cell connections as we get older. The old wisdom was that you had x amount of brain cells, and once you reached a certain age,... more

Bonding! Fun! SLING!

In all the adoption material you get during orientation (I just think our orientation leader is the cutest, but Lord help me I think this college metaphor is about to break), there's frequent mention of bonding as a thing. A necessary thing. Since the baby didn't come directly from mommy's tummy, but instead wound up in a kind of crowded institution for a while, the kind of human contact most babies take for granted (the ungrateful wretches) gets left out. So, emotional bonding. Extra holding! (Fun for a couple of months, then, well, a bit like having a tiny personal trainer.)... more

So, today, more or less, is the Chinese equivalent of November 2.

(Catholic readers are nodding their heads, the rest of you are no doubt puzzled and bemused.)

It's the day for the ancestors, when the graves get cleaned, food offerings and flowers get left, and incense and "otherworld money" (or "hell money," pictured here) is burned. Traditionally, for those of us with European ancestors, this would be the kind of thing you'd do on All Souls Day, which is the day after All Saints (or All Hallows) Day, which is the day after All Hallows Eve, better known as Hallows'... more

So, I'm still waiting for a C.A. (consular appointment).

Instead of the usual 36-72-hour turnaround the consulate has been experiencing after getting the T.A. (travel approval) from the Chinese government, it's turned into more like a week, they say. (Or, more properly, our agency says they say.)

So I still don't know when exactly we're leaving for China.

I'm guessing this is another result of a greater number of Americans adopting from China, but who knows.

We wait.

Yunyang County, where my son (son!) comes from, is the home of the Zhang Fei Temple.

That's Zhang Fei in the lower right of the picture. The one with the googly eyes and the wrathful grin, yeah?

His temple is the place in this story: http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/70271.htm

Zhang Fei was a famous general from the third century (and an important character in the epic ... more