All Good Things...

My apologies in advance for the brevity of this post, but I must pack for our exodus from the People's Republic of China. My wife, having taken some allergy medicine, is surprisingly passed out on the bed as I write this.

To begin today, we all went down to the Guangzhou zoo to have a little peek at the animals, especially the oh-so famous pandas. Katie and I saw the pandas in their Chengdu habitat about eight years ago, and we thought they were the laziest, most annoying mascot the WWF could have possibly picked ("They're too lazy to procreate?"we asked in disgust), but Jonah was interested, so away we went.

All we could say was "Erm... maybe they're dieting, Jonah" as we walked past emaciated animal after animal in their cages on the way to the pandas. Not the most uplifting trip, to say the least. Finally, when we made it to the pandas, there was one just sitting there in the middle of his cage, just chillin'. By then, Jonah had pretty much lost interest, anyway, so we headed back to the entrance, none too impressed.

Cheryl, our good friend from the Colorado via Newcastle, had to catch her flight right after we got back. She was invaluable in helping with so many things, and we were really sad to be saying goodbye to her after spending so much time together and relying on her so much.

In the afternoon, we all packed in to the consulate and swore that we wouldn't abandon our newly adopted child, which meant that the US gov't could give us his visa to enter the country. Having never seen a US visa before, I gotta say that it's one thing the US does right. I mean, you look at the US Dollar vs. the British Pound, or something, and you're, like, "What, creativity taking some time off that day, America?" Not so with the visa. That's something that a foreign national can look at in his or her passport and really look forward to using... until they visit any number of major cities at night, that is...

Anyway, back to packing some luggage. At this point, I'm just throwing crap into suitcases knowing that there is no such thing as clean and dirty at this point, and that we're all really looking forward to getting the Sam Hill home. We make a 30 minute hop to Hong Kong, a 12-hour marathon / skip to LAX, and then a little jump to DIA where our good friend will be waiting to drive us home and subsequently disinfect her vehicle.

Selfcrest, out!