I love to shop. Anywhere, anytime, for anything. But not in China.
Here, the rules of engagement are simple: You enter a store and stroll through the aisles where some lovely muzak is playing. Maybe someone offers to help you, or even bring you a soda. You choose an item (or thirty), select the correct size (S,M,L or XL --depending on how the diet is going), and pay what the tag tells you (unless it is on sale, and really, why buy something if it's not?) It's all very simple, very civilized.
Not in China.
There, you have to fight your way through a teeming mass of street vultures, er vendors, just to get to the store ("Hey lady, you want T-shirt, DVD, postcards?). Then, once inside, you fall prey to the pack of salespeople waiting to pounce upon the next victim. The hunter has become the hunted. (Muzak? who can hear anything except, "buy, buy, buy"?)
You wander, dazed, from stand to stand where everyone is selling the exact same things ("No, really, these are real pearls and diamonds for five dollars. See, I can grind them under my heel and they don't break." Yeah, always the mark of fine jewelry. I understand that's how De Beers tests their diamonds.)
If you pause or make eye contact, they have you and it's all over.
Suddenly, you find yourself surrounded by an endless sea of merchandise. You like rings? They have rings. Silver, Gold, Platinum(aluminum, painted aluminum, tin). Tiffany, Cartier, Harry Winston. (Riiiight) Watches? Rolex, Tag, Patek. (all made of lead) Trays and cases and boxes of whatever you want, or think you want, magically appear. Soon, you are buried under an avalanche of fakes, er genuine imitations.
What size do you want? XL,XXL, or XXXL? (Don't even think of looking at S, M, or L unless you make a supermodel look fat or are six years old. Not a real ego boosting experience when they refer you to the men's section because they don't have anything large enough to fit you in women's. The Chinese are seriously tiny compared to us huge, hulking Americans.)
Finally, desperate to escape, you make your selection. Then, the real fun begins.
They tell you it costs $400. It doesn't matter what it is, everything costs $400. (Of course, in Chinese money, this is eighty million dollars, and you have to do the math in your head, which is always fun.) You offer $1.
They pull at their hair, beat their chests, gnash their teeth...and drop the price to $300. You offer $2.
They tell you how pretty you are. How sweet you are. How smart you are. How that ring/watch/shirt was made for you, and only you because no one else would look good in it...and drop the price to $200. You offer $3.
By the way, this is all conducted via calculator. They enter their price, you hit clear and enter your price, they hit clear...and so on, and so on, and so on...Try that at Neiman Marcus.
Anyway, this goes on for some time. You start to walk away, they follow you, grab you, all but body tackle you. They swear you are killing them...slowly.
Finally, you pay $5-$10 for something that is worth fifty cents, and you are free -- sort of. You still have to fight your way back to the door and the bag you are holding labels you an easy mark.
When you do finally escape, exhausted, you sort through your haul only to find that, caught up in the moment, you now own an enormous pile of junk.
However, now that you've refined your bargaining skills, you are ready to go home and buy that used car you've been looking at for $5.
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Friday, October 5, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Here a Squat, There a Squat, Everywhere a Squat
There is a reason I don't go camping (actually, there are many, many reasons). But a really big one is that I can't squat behind a tree. Seriously, I think I am missing the squatting gene. Maybe, like some other diseases, it skips a generation, or maybe I was switched at birth with a member of the Royal family...yeah, that's it. (I mean, can you imagine HRH Liz hanging with Yogi, looking for a nice, leafy shrub to duck behind?)
Whatever the reason, China should not be on your top ten list of places to visit if you don't squat. Personally, I think their flag should be a toilet with a red line through it instead of a yellow star(s)! Much more helpful.
You had to squat at the wall, the palace, the Forbidden city, and most restaurants. The temples, the terra cotta soldiers site, even the airport all had squat toilets (picture a seat set into the floor with footprint guides on either side). Apparently, everything really is made in China except for toilets.
For someone who has managed to avoid squatting her whole life (and this includes two summers at camp) this was not good. And, as if the situation wasn't bad enough, the smell in these places was blinding! Imagine the elephant cage where the entire herd has been given Metamucil filled bran muffins on a ninety degree day and the air conditioning is broken. That would be an improvement.
To make matters worse, if, by some minor miracle, you did manage to get lucky and behind door number one was an actual toilet...surprise, no paper! I don't mean they ran out, I mean no paper. Ever. Not even a holder. Most of us, fortunately, had been forewarned and came prepared for just such an event. What we were not prepared for was the fact that you did not dispose of your paper in the toilet, but in the wastebasket next to it. (There's a job people are standing in line for!)
You didn't dare do otherwise and clog the only toilet for miles around that wasn't floor level or the sixty people in line behind you(all Americans of course) would have beaten you to death with their purse sized packs of Kleenex and bottles of anti-bacterial gel.
Now, since I don't squat (I was not about to break a life-long record), I didn't drink much during the day (to heck with worrying about germs and parasites, I was more worried about my shoes). Never was I so happy to see the hotel at the end of the day. Tim quickly got used to being second in my affections to a hunk of porcelain. He understood completely when I rushed past his outstretched arms to go embrace the toilet instead.
The hotel staff also took it in stride. They simply unloaded a case of water onto my bedside table every night and placed the recycling bin for the hotel outside our door. Either I am not the first person to ever try and rehydrate at night, or they suspected we were harboring a camel.
After a week of opening doors only to quickly shut them again, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Before getting on the plane for the return flight home, I did check out the bathroom situation. You can't be too careful, and thirteen and a half hours is a long time to wait for a seat.
Whatever the reason, China should not be on your top ten list of places to visit if you don't squat. Personally, I think their flag should be a toilet with a red line through it instead of a yellow star(s)! Much more helpful.
You had to squat at the wall, the palace, the Forbidden city, and most restaurants. The temples, the terra cotta soldiers site, even the airport all had squat toilets (picture a seat set into the floor with footprint guides on either side). Apparently, everything really is made in China except for toilets.
For someone who has managed to avoid squatting her whole life (and this includes two summers at camp) this was not good. And, as if the situation wasn't bad enough, the smell in these places was blinding! Imagine the elephant cage where the entire herd has been given Metamucil filled bran muffins on a ninety degree day and the air conditioning is broken. That would be an improvement.
To make matters worse, if, by some minor miracle, you did manage to get lucky and behind door number one was an actual toilet...surprise, no paper! I don't mean they ran out, I mean no paper. Ever. Not even a holder. Most of us, fortunately, had been forewarned and came prepared for just such an event. What we were not prepared for was the fact that you did not dispose of your paper in the toilet, but in the wastebasket next to it. (There's a job people are standing in line for!)
You didn't dare do otherwise and clog the only toilet for miles around that wasn't floor level or the sixty people in line behind you(all Americans of course) would have beaten you to death with their purse sized packs of Kleenex and bottles of anti-bacterial gel.
Now, since I don't squat (I was not about to break a life-long record), I didn't drink much during the day (to heck with worrying about germs and parasites, I was more worried about my shoes). Never was I so happy to see the hotel at the end of the day. Tim quickly got used to being second in my affections to a hunk of porcelain. He understood completely when I rushed past his outstretched arms to go embrace the toilet instead.
The hotel staff also took it in stride. They simply unloaded a case of water onto my bedside table every night and placed the recycling bin for the hotel outside our door. Either I am not the first person to ever try and rehydrate at night, or they suspected we were harboring a camel.
After a week of opening doors only to quickly shut them again, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Before getting on the plane for the return flight home, I did check out the bathroom situation. You can't be too careful, and thirteen and a half hours is a long time to wait for a seat.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Great Workout...I Mean Wall
You can't go to China without visiting the Great Wall--once.
Arriving in Badaling (insert your own Sopranos joke here), we got off the bus and proceeded to run the gauntlet of vendors selling everything from watches with Mao frantically saluting every second to "mag-a-nets" the size of the wall itself to "genuine imitation" (I swear they actually said this) purses, clothing, jewelry, etc. And they did not want to take "no" for an answer.
As if this wasn't daunting enough, we then passed through a short, single lane tunnel competing for space with cars and buses who all seemed to be playing a game called "pick off the tourists" (personal safety is apparently not a big issue for the Chinese people) to climb the steps that led to the Great Wall.
Our guide explained that if we went left on the wall, we were following in the footsteps of Nixon and other great (?) world leaders. In fact, all eighty gazillion Chinese people went left when they came to visit. If we went right, we were a bunch of weak little American sissies who needed our mommies to wipe our noses.
Naturally, since it was a matter of national pride, we all headed left and, after about ten minutes of foolish bravado and excruciating pain, we realized we should have wimped out and gone right and to heck with being macho (Meanwhile, all the Chinese people who, in actual fact, go right were having a good laugh at our expense!).
The first incline really wasn't too bad. It was only at about a mere forty-five degrees. Even the first flight of steps wasn't too bad. There were only two dozen that randomly ranged from two inches to twelve inches in height. It was the second through 142nd inclines and flights of stairs that did us in, where the incline increased to ninety degrees and the steps became the stuff of nightmares. Oh, and did I mention that the only railing was about six inches off the ground, so you couldn't even pull yourself up? I hadn't realized that they had consulted with the Marquis de Sade when building the wall.
Except for a few fitness freaks of nature, we pretty much dropped like flies. At each and every plateau, we found someone waving the white flag and trying not to cry like a baby. This thing would have brought Jack LaLane to his knees! Most of us tried to push on to the fourth tower and end of the section, but we were just kidding ourselves. Oh sure, maybe if we'd had two weeks, a Sherpa and a system of pulleys and levers.....maybe. But an hour to get up, down and back to the bus???
We tried to make the most of it though, stopping to admire the scenery and take photos, but it was really all a cover. What we were actually doing was gasping for breath and surreptitiously checking for signs of heart attack and stroke.
Meanwhile, an eighty-year-old Chinese man with a cane passed us by around the third tower as though he was merely out for his daily constitutional around the block. To add insult to injury, when you finally did drag yourself up to the next tower or plateau, there were vendors waiting for you with tables and trays and cases full of more "genuine imitations", T-shirts and paintings.
I like to imagine that they are air-lifted up to work each day since I could barely drag myself up that far. Either that or they simply live up there, coming down to visit the family on holidays and replenish their supplies. Any other explanation is unacceptable in my fantasy land. You almost want to buy their stuff just to applaud their stamina. (Although if they were selling oxygen tanks, they could make a killing).
Coming down was only slightly less traumatic than going up. First of all, the vendors knew this was their last shot (forever), so they began chasing us and pushing their wares in our faces, rapidly dropping their prices ($60...okay $30). Fabulous. The wall wasn't enough of a challenge, now we had a human obstacle course to maneuver around.
Stairs that had seemed impossibly steep on the way up now looked like ladders that you were somehow supposed to go down forwards, without taking out the two hundred other people struggling to climb up.
They told up that when the men building the wall died, they were simply buried in the wall (we suspect they died because they wanted to). It made us wonder if the renovated sections might not be filled with hapless tourists who decided to turn left instead of right!
Arriving in Badaling (insert your own Sopranos joke here), we got off the bus and proceeded to run the gauntlet of vendors selling everything from watches with Mao frantically saluting every second to "mag-a-nets" the size of the wall itself to "genuine imitation" (I swear they actually said this) purses, clothing, jewelry, etc. And they did not want to take "no" for an answer.
As if this wasn't daunting enough, we then passed through a short, single lane tunnel competing for space with cars and buses who all seemed to be playing a game called "pick off the tourists" (personal safety is apparently not a big issue for the Chinese people) to climb the steps that led to the Great Wall.
Our guide explained that if we went left on the wall, we were following in the footsteps of Nixon and other great (?) world leaders. In fact, all eighty gazillion Chinese people went left when they came to visit. If we went right, we were a bunch of weak little American sissies who needed our mommies to wipe our noses.
Naturally, since it was a matter of national pride, we all headed left and, after about ten minutes of foolish bravado and excruciating pain, we realized we should have wimped out and gone right and to heck with being macho (Meanwhile, all the Chinese people who, in actual fact, go right were having a good laugh at our expense!).
The first incline really wasn't too bad. It was only at about a mere forty-five degrees. Even the first flight of steps wasn't too bad. There were only two dozen that randomly ranged from two inches to twelve inches in height. It was the second through 142nd inclines and flights of stairs that did us in, where the incline increased to ninety degrees and the steps became the stuff of nightmares. Oh, and did I mention that the only railing was about six inches off the ground, so you couldn't even pull yourself up? I hadn't realized that they had consulted with the Marquis de Sade when building the wall.
Except for a few fitness freaks of nature, we pretty much dropped like flies. At each and every plateau, we found someone waving the white flag and trying not to cry like a baby. This thing would have brought Jack LaLane to his knees! Most of us tried to push on to the fourth tower and end of the section, but we were just kidding ourselves. Oh sure, maybe if we'd had two weeks, a Sherpa and a system of pulleys and levers.....maybe. But an hour to get up, down and back to the bus???
We tried to make the most of it though, stopping to admire the scenery and take photos, but it was really all a cover. What we were actually doing was gasping for breath and surreptitiously checking for signs of heart attack and stroke.
Meanwhile, an eighty-year-old Chinese man with a cane passed us by around the third tower as though he was merely out for his daily constitutional around the block. To add insult to injury, when you finally did drag yourself up to the next tower or plateau, there were vendors waiting for you with tables and trays and cases full of more "genuine imitations", T-shirts and paintings.
I like to imagine that they are air-lifted up to work each day since I could barely drag myself up that far. Either that or they simply live up there, coming down to visit the family on holidays and replenish their supplies. Any other explanation is unacceptable in my fantasy land. You almost want to buy their stuff just to applaud their stamina. (Although if they were selling oxygen tanks, they could make a killing).
Coming down was only slightly less traumatic than going up. First of all, the vendors knew this was their last shot (forever), so they began chasing us and pushing their wares in our faces, rapidly dropping their prices ($60...okay $30). Fabulous. The wall wasn't enough of a challenge, now we had a human obstacle course to maneuver around.
Stairs that had seemed impossibly steep on the way up now looked like ladders that you were somehow supposed to go down forwards, without taking out the two hundred other people struggling to climb up.
They told up that when the men building the wall died, they were simply buried in the wall (we suspect they died because they wanted to). It made us wonder if the renovated sections might not be filled with hapless tourists who decided to turn left instead of right!
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Chicken, Dumplings and Goldfish
You know you're in trouble when you visit a country that has a KFC on every corner which the locals consider "five star dining at one star prices", and it is the go-to-place for the all important first date.
Our first night in Xi'an (she-an), Beth and I ate at House O'Dumplings (a.k.a. Defachang Restaurant) which boasted 180 different kinds of dumplings shaped like everything from porky pig to Buddha.
The meal started innocently enough with four small appetizer dishes of tofu, peanuts, beans and corn. Then they brought four steamer trays of dumplings...then four more trays...and four more after that. Would the madness never end?!
There were walnut dumplings (China is not the place you want to be if you have a nut allergy), fried rice dumplings, spinach dumplings, chicken, beef and pork dumplings (remind anyone else of Forest Gump?) and some with fillings we could only guess at, but which we suspected might contain the turtle that had been swimming in the tank by the reception desk. Of course they swore that anything unidentifiable was chicken, but that turtle had looked scared. Real scared. Like he knew something we didn't.
The steamed dumplings courses were followed by, surprise...dumpling soup! It was only when the watermelon came (the Chinese idea of dessert...have they never heard of Entemen's or Pepperidge Farm?) that we knew were were finally saved from the relentless parade of dumplings. (FYI, you do not want to go to bed too soon after eating your body weight in dumplings. It is not pretty)
Our first meal in Beijing, at a place called the Green T, proved just as interesting, but for different reasons. Walking through floor to ceiling white curtains which billowed constantly despite the fact that there was no breeze, we found ourselves transported to a black and white version of Hogworts where candles hung in midair over long tables whose chairs had backs reaching halfway to the twenty foot ceiling and purple boa feather pillows. Flute music was provided by a young woman perched atop of what looked like an ice sculpture set on top of the bar. (for someone who turns on their heated car seat in July, my bottom grew numb just looking at her!)
Even the bathrooms provided entertainment for us with clear glass walls that magically clouded up as you entered("okay, you stand our here and yell when you can't see me any more." --Tim can kiss that ambassadorship good-bye!) and stalls completely lined with mirrors--inside. ( I definitely could have done with a little less entertainment there.)
As for the food, we all steered clear of anything that sounded suspicious including the green chicken and something that still had feet and various innards. We found that nothing was completely safe, however, when the woman sitting next to me ordered a vegetarian dish only to have it served with a wineglass containing a live goldfish. We weren't sure if he was a garnish or for downing like a chaser, but we named him Larry and debated flushing him to freedom. (He actually looked even more scared than the turtle, and I think I saw him mouthing,"Help me!", at one point during dinner)
After several more days of meals involving many courses of things that may have previously barked or meowed (and not a fortune cookie or piece of chocolate in sight), we celebrated our last night in China with a trip to (another) funky restaurant that looked like it had been designed by the Picasso, Poe and Addams Family firm. (This time, the floor to ceiling bathroom mirrors were tinged green. And I thought the clear glass was bad?).
Despite things like Shark lip soup (who knew Jaws had lips?) and oysters the size of my head, (can you say mutant, boys and girls?) the meal was good. All eighteen courses (How do these people not weigh 1000 lbs.?) Even the watermelon dessert.
Our first night in Xi'an (she-an), Beth and I ate at House O'Dumplings (a.k.a. Defachang Restaurant) which boasted 180 different kinds of dumplings shaped like everything from porky pig to Buddha.
The meal started innocently enough with four small appetizer dishes of tofu, peanuts, beans and corn. Then they brought four steamer trays of dumplings...then four more trays...and four more after that. Would the madness never end?!
There were walnut dumplings (China is not the place you want to be if you have a nut allergy), fried rice dumplings, spinach dumplings, chicken, beef and pork dumplings (remind anyone else of Forest Gump?) and some with fillings we could only guess at, but which we suspected might contain the turtle that had been swimming in the tank by the reception desk. Of course they swore that anything unidentifiable was chicken, but that turtle had looked scared. Real scared. Like he knew something we didn't.
The steamed dumplings courses were followed by, surprise...dumpling soup! It was only when the watermelon came (the Chinese idea of dessert...have they never heard of Entemen's or Pepperidge Farm?) that we knew were were finally saved from the relentless parade of dumplings. (FYI, you do not want to go to bed too soon after eating your body weight in dumplings. It is not pretty)
Our first meal in Beijing, at a place called the Green T, proved just as interesting, but for different reasons. Walking through floor to ceiling white curtains which billowed constantly despite the fact that there was no breeze, we found ourselves transported to a black and white version of Hogworts where candles hung in midair over long tables whose chairs had backs reaching halfway to the twenty foot ceiling and purple boa feather pillows. Flute music was provided by a young woman perched atop of what looked like an ice sculpture set on top of the bar. (for someone who turns on their heated car seat in July, my bottom grew numb just looking at her!)
Even the bathrooms provided entertainment for us with clear glass walls that magically clouded up as you entered("okay, you stand our here and yell when you can't see me any more." --Tim can kiss that ambassadorship good-bye!) and stalls completely lined with mirrors--inside. ( I definitely could have done with a little less entertainment there.)
As for the food, we all steered clear of anything that sounded suspicious including the green chicken and something that still had feet and various innards. We found that nothing was completely safe, however, when the woman sitting next to me ordered a vegetarian dish only to have it served with a wineglass containing a live goldfish. We weren't sure if he was a garnish or for downing like a chaser, but we named him Larry and debated flushing him to freedom. (He actually looked even more scared than the turtle, and I think I saw him mouthing,"Help me!", at one point during dinner)
After several more days of meals involving many courses of things that may have previously barked or meowed (and not a fortune cookie or piece of chocolate in sight), we celebrated our last night in China with a trip to (another) funky restaurant that looked like it had been designed by the Picasso, Poe and Addams Family firm. (This time, the floor to ceiling bathroom mirrors were tinged green. And I thought the clear glass was bad?).
Despite things like Shark lip soup (who knew Jaws had lips?) and oysters the size of my head, (can you say mutant, boys and girls?) the meal was good. All eighteen courses (How do these people not weigh 1000 lbs.?) Even the watermelon dessert.
Friday, September 21, 2007
An Auspicious Start
Our trip to China had finally begun.
Turns out my travelling companion, Beth (our friend who works with Tim), is just as anal as I am, so we were at the airport way early. There were maybe six people in line and security was a breeze, plus they were able to check our bags all the way through to our final distination (we we landed in Beijing, and had to change planes to get to Xi'an to see the terra-cotta soldiers). Could life get any better?
Since we were there so early, we decided to celebrate with coffee at a cafe across from the gate, a major decision for someone who normally sits at the gate anxiously watching every move made by the gate aagents, knowing that the minute I leave, even to go to the bathroom everyone will be hustled aboard and the flight will take off without me (paging Dr. Freud). Either that or all the overhead storage space will be taken, which is worse.
So there we sat, sipping and chatting when we looked up and realized that, oh no, our flight was boarding (early) and the waiting area had completely emptied out (who's crazy now, huh?).
First to arrive, last to board. Not good for someone who makes the Rainman look like a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. Especially when it takes me a good fifteen minutes once I'm actually in the seat to perform my pre-flight checklist (book, ipod, sudoku, blanket, pillow...the list goes on and on and that's just for a two hour domestic flight).
As if it wasn't bad enough, somehow I handed over the wrong ticket which they put through the machine and ripped in half (how was I going to explain that sixteen hours later to someone who spoke Chinese?). Then, I couldn't free my passport holder from the pouch inside my bag, or the passport from the holder. I also managed to get tangled up in my jacket after dropping it twice. This was beyond Lucy. I had become Jerry Lewis! Of course, Beth was a great help, doubled over laughing.
Once on the plane, the comedy of errors continued. Trying to lug my bags up the narrow stairs to the second level (and by bags I mean a suitcase I could live out of for several weeks and a "purse" that could house a family of four -- packing light to me meanns not bringing my out of season clothes) was like trying to wrestle an alligator while juggling jello.
At this point, my jacket was wrapped around my neck and my passport and boarding pass were clenched in my teeth. Concerned for the safety of my fellow passengers and possible personal injury lawsuits, the flight attendant relieved me of my suitcase at the top of the stairs.
Now all I had to do was unpack and settle into what would be my home for the next thirteen and a half hours. Refusing a pre-flight glass of OJ, I leaned forward to open my bag, not realizing that my seatmate had decided that a nice glass of juice would hit the spot and was reaching for it behind my back. Unfortunately, I chose that moment to sit back rather abruptly and the juice hit the spot allright. It hit several on my shirt, my chair, my pillow....
The rest of the flight passed uneventfully, but by then the tone was set. Therefore, it was no surprise when we landed in Beijing and I got patted down by a security agent who got further around the bases than Tim on our fourth date. And then Beth walked into a table, knocking over a soda (karma for laughing at me)...yep, it was going to be an interesting trip.
Turns out my travelling companion, Beth (our friend who works with Tim), is just as anal as I am, so we were at the airport way early. There were maybe six people in line and security was a breeze, plus they were able to check our bags all the way through to our final distination (we we landed in Beijing, and had to change planes to get to Xi'an to see the terra-cotta soldiers). Could life get any better?
Since we were there so early, we decided to celebrate with coffee at a cafe across from the gate, a major decision for someone who normally sits at the gate anxiously watching every move made by the gate aagents, knowing that the minute I leave, even to go to the bathroom everyone will be hustled aboard and the flight will take off without me (paging Dr. Freud). Either that or all the overhead storage space will be taken, which is worse.
So there we sat, sipping and chatting when we looked up and realized that, oh no, our flight was boarding (early) and the waiting area had completely emptied out (who's crazy now, huh?).
First to arrive, last to board. Not good for someone who makes the Rainman look like a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. Especially when it takes me a good fifteen minutes once I'm actually in the seat to perform my pre-flight checklist (book, ipod, sudoku, blanket, pillow...the list goes on and on and that's just for a two hour domestic flight).
As if it wasn't bad enough, somehow I handed over the wrong ticket which they put through the machine and ripped in half (how was I going to explain that sixteen hours later to someone who spoke Chinese?). Then, I couldn't free my passport holder from the pouch inside my bag, or the passport from the holder. I also managed to get tangled up in my jacket after dropping it twice. This was beyond Lucy. I had become Jerry Lewis! Of course, Beth was a great help, doubled over laughing.
Once on the plane, the comedy of errors continued. Trying to lug my bags up the narrow stairs to the second level (and by bags I mean a suitcase I could live out of for several weeks and a "purse" that could house a family of four -- packing light to me meanns not bringing my out of season clothes) was like trying to wrestle an alligator while juggling jello.
At this point, my jacket was wrapped around my neck and my passport and boarding pass were clenched in my teeth. Concerned for the safety of my fellow passengers and possible personal injury lawsuits, the flight attendant relieved me of my suitcase at the top of the stairs.
Now all I had to do was unpack and settle into what would be my home for the next thirteen and a half hours. Refusing a pre-flight glass of OJ, I leaned forward to open my bag, not realizing that my seatmate had decided that a nice glass of juice would hit the spot and was reaching for it behind my back. Unfortunately, I chose that moment to sit back rather abruptly and the juice hit the spot allright. It hit several on my shirt, my chair, my pillow....
The rest of the flight passed uneventfully, but by then the tone was set. Therefore, it was no surprise when we landed in Beijing and I got patted down by a security agent who got further around the bases than Tim on our fourth date. And then Beth walked into a table, knocking over a soda (karma for laughing at me)...yep, it was going to be an interesting trip.
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