Before I’d finished finalizing the details of my flight, August 1st, the dreaded packing date had arrived. The movers were horrifyingly on time, Christian and I were both unfortunately hung over, and the apartment was already a complete wreck. Having never partaken of nor witnessed an assisted move before, neither Christian nor I really had much idea of what the whole thing entailed. We walked threw the house, army of uniformed movers in-tow, and pointed at what we wanted shipped. Then before the command had even made it through the translating chain, poof, it was wrapped, taped, and hidden away in a box that was then assigned a number, a label, and the owner, “Mr. Christian.”

Soon enough, the movers were on auto-pilot like some kind of blue-jumpsuited, multi-armed Rube Goldberg Machine, leaving Christian and I with a surprising amount of leisure time and far too little coffee–thanks to the packing of our espresso machine–to properly enjoyed it. We took turns walking the dog, playing on the internet, and blaming each other for items that mistakenly were or weren’t packed while the moving machine toiled away. What we didn’t do, however, was kill each other. The movers, whether their blessed swift indiscrimination took the thinking and the arguments out of our hands. No longer was moving a matter of forethought and planning and trying to get rid of one another’s possessions. Moving, rather, had been reduced to its purest essence: pointing and taking naps.

In the end, a few things got packed that shouldn’t have, virtually Nico’s entire wardrobe for one, one of the landlord’s couch cushions for another. A few things didn’t get packed than should have–Nico’s winter coat–but for the most part, everything magically ended up where it ought, and by 2 pm Monday all of our possessions (all 103 boxes) had been loaded into our container in preparation for their two month voyage to our new home, leaving us with an apartment filled with echoes and a marriage still intact.

The stickers have managed to survive. They’re all over the couch and the coffee table, some times they “star” for a day or two on tv, and doing a “sticker check” of my daily outfits has become a habit. Thankfully, though, Nico has also managed to get past the initial sticker addiction in which he was whining every half hour for another sticker hit. Consider it all a sticker truce.

This is perhaps part of why when Nico bounded up to the door proudly waving around one of his sand toys that cradled the corpse of a dead goldfish, I may have shrieked and jumped a little more than necessary. Well, that and we don’t even have a goldfish.

Or rather, we didn’t have a goldfish until we left the house this morning.

One of the troubles with living as a foreigner in China is people like to give your child things. Especially if your child is Nico. This has become a particular headache in the past two weeks when I began the “culling” phase of our move and Nico proceeded onto the “let’s collect goldfish” phase.

The first two fish Nico acquired were from one of the compound fountains. Apparently, it had to be cleaned out and Nico being cute and charming and in adoration of all things “fish” managed to weasle the apartment managers out of a pair of goldfish. I dealt with the situation by convincing him the goldfish would be happier in a different fountain.

The second pair of fish were a gift from Ayi and her husband when they  greeted Nico with what I like to call a “fish death ball” as we dropped him off for an overnight at their place. Basically, this contraption is a little ball on a key ring that some enterprising person fills with water, gravel, and fish. These are then given to children who run around with them as children will, shaking them all up until I presume the fish die. Nico’s guppies survived the night and so I rewarded them with a transfer into a proper fish bowl for the time being.

Today, however, somehow brought yet another pair of goldfish. I’m not too sure how Nico acquired them as I was busy being horrified by the story of how he had killed the dead one (the second one remains alive for the time being and is hanging out with the guppies). Apparently the fish-killer reached into the bowl and squeezed it to death. Ayi related this story to me with the same mildly giddy excitement that she tells me about all of Nico’s morning escapades, leading me to believe that she didn’t find the goldfish corpse nearly as traumatizing as myself. Indeed as far as I can tell, after Nico killed the fish, she proceeded to fish it out of the bowl and placed it in the sand toy which Nico was gleefully carting around.

As the last murder Nico committed involved impaling a fly on the edge of a coin, I wasn’t sure what to do with the remains of the present kill. Both Gaudi and 狐猴 the cat were tossing carnal glances at the body, but I just couldn’t handle the prospect of little golden fish guts around the apartment. So I opted for the preferred fish burial of my youth.

“Come, Nico. We need to bury the fish,” I said as I picked up the body walked off to the bathroom, Nico trailing along, insistently pointing back at the fish bowl where presumably he thought the fish would begin swimming once again if I just dropped it in.

“No, no, Nico. The fish is dead. We need to let it go.” And let it go I did. As its body glided down the toilet, Nico finally realized the seriousness of the situation.

You see, things that go down the toilet never come back.

Three hours later, the boy was still tearfully pointing at the bathroom calling out, “Fish! Fish!”

And if I never get him potty-trained, this will be why.

It’s been a whirlwind of activity since then. Movers had to be found. The dog had to be made EU import-ready. Apartment and car hunts needed to be launched. A new language learned (well it’s not new for Christian). Furniture bought. Jobs given notice. Ayi given notice. Adoption agency and home study guy given notice. Things given away. Friends bid farewell…

As of now, we’re in the final stretch with one month left in China (our stuff leaves on the slow boat in two weeks). As we get closer to the day of departure, loose ends actually are getting tied up and what once seemed like a Herculean effort is proving doable by mere mortals.

As part of our move, this website is also going to be changing with the hopes that without any silly things like real jobs to distract me, I’ll be better about updating it.

Next stop, Dornbirn, Austria!

On the whole, Thai massages are fabulous. I had one truly disappointing massage, which is a pretty good average, I find, as I’m rather picky about my massages. The best one I had was on our last day, in Bangkok. The masseuse bent her head in a silent prayer before beginning the massage, and the gods apparently heard her out, as it ranked among the best I’ve had. Thai massage involves a combination of rubbing, poking, and bending (the bending is very similar to yoga postures), and this woman knew exactly how to align body parts to get the most out of each action (without breaking my back).

It’s a little disappointing to have gone through that and then come back home to the rubbing and pounding of Chinese massage. Though I suppose after a few, I won’t mind so much anymore as any massage is better than none at all.

Well, after two weeks in Thailand, I must tell you that Thai food in Thailand tastes remarkably like Thai food in Seattle… or Denver… or Feldkirch, Austria. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still delicious (it is Thai after all), but it ain’t no Sichuan.

What is fabulous about Thailand, though, is the street food. Once I discovered it, I used every eating opportunity I had to order a papaya salad from any street vendor I could find. Freaking fantastic! I haven’t been this excited about a street food find since liang pir. Between Papaya salad and freshly made coconut ice cream, I think I could happily exist for the rest of my life with nothing else. Christian, for his part, fell in love with another Northern Thai concoction, Khao Soi, which consists of egg noodles in a thick coconut curry soup, laden with chicken, and topped with crunchy fried noodles. He was also a fan of Thai iced tea (consisting of tea, sugar, and condensed milk… Thailand must be what keeps Nestle in business with all the condensed milk they used in their tea and coffee).

Some of the most surprisingly amazing things we ran across, though, weren’t even Thai. I had the best Palak Paneer of my life in a little Thai-Indian restaurant right by the Night Market in Chiang Mai. I also came into an absolutely brilliant banana-coconut-ginger smoothie, which was just heaven on earth (as was the organic fruit and yogurt I was eating it with). And then there was this great feta-spinach wrap in a whole wheat tortilla that was so delicious, I’ve forgotten what Christian had at that meal (though I do remember that there were two monks at the restaurant). On Ko Samui, we came across some amazing seafood at a French-Thai fusion restaurant.

And then there were the bananas! There exist these little fat, ugly bananas in Thailand that are sweeter and more custardy and just better than any banana you have ever bought from the supermarket. One awesome dessert involved cutting them up and putting them in a soup of coconut milk, but they’re brilliant raw (and also fabulous in smoothies, which everyone in Thailand calls shakes for some reason).

So as far as I’m concerned, go to Thailand for the street food and the bananas, then grab a couple awesome foreign meals while you’re there. The Thai food might actually be overrated (though admittedly fifty times better than anything we can get in Dalian).

I arrived at Dalian airport shortly before 6:30am for an 8:00am flight. By the time I made it to the front of the only economy line open to check in half the airport’s morning flights, it was 7:00am, and the woman at the check in counter informed me in Chinese that check in for my flight had already closed. I don’t have the vocabulary in Chinese for “check in has already closed, you poor bastard and there’s no way I’m going to do anything to help you such as tell you where my supervisor is because I really, really want you to miss this flight, you spoiled American,” so there were a series of panicked phone calls to Christian and the ticket booking company (which was closed!), as well as some swearing at two separate agents both of whom refused to check me in for a reason I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t until I went to the trouble of asking for a representative who spoke English that I was directed to a manager and she explained what was going on and checked me in anyway. It was 7:10 am at this point, and the final boarding call was already being made on the loud speaker for my 8:00am flight.

Of course, all the lines at security were super long. Though one woman, seeing me utterly horrified, mentioned that it was okay for me to cut the line since my flight was being repeatedly announced and all that. So I did, and no one said anything about it. After security, I ran to my gate, dropping everything from the pockets of my coat twice before finally arriving, short of breath and in a daze, confused as to why the flight’s staff were giving me quizzical looks. They didn’t seemed to notice that they’d been doing “final boarding” calls for five minutes. The plane ended up taking off at 7:35am, though to the end all the schedules continued to say 8:00am.

Despite the inauspicious start, the rest of my day in Beijing was quite fabulous. I went to a wonderful Ashtanga class at Fine Yoga, I found an imported food store filled with such hard-to-find delicacies as sourdough bread starter and red lentils, and spent far too much time oggling the books in some tiny Foreign language bookstore (not the big one near Tiananmen). In fact, if not for the inconvenience of spending forty five minutes getting my fingerprints taken and turning in documents at the Embassy, the entire day could have very well been one marvelous birthday present (you’re not getting out of my birthday that easily, though, Christian, but if you do want to give me another day in Beijing…). Heck, even the embassy was pretty fun. The guards had a great time going poking around my yoga mat and the groceries I left at the front gate and the officers in charge of my fingerprints and taking oaths and what not were all pretty jovial.

After the embassy, I had to spend some time hunting down a suitable box so that I could check my groceries on the flight home as I was pretty sure Christian’s giant bottle of Heinz 57 ketchup (not to mention my much coveted bottle of wine) would be declared a liquid. That done, I still made it back to the airport with plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely dinner at the awesome Thai restaurant in Terminal 3 as well as a cup of (not-Starbucks) coffee afterward.

Then it was back home on an eight thirty flight and straight to bed with dreams of all the organic brown rice pasta I didn’t buy gnawing at my brain.

I learned my lesson about being too optimistic, though, when I received a “desperate” call, asking me to MC the whole thing. By the time they finished stroking my ego, I found myself committed to far more than I wanted to be. Christian wasn’t exactly thrilled either when he found out our nice little family evening (we’d been planning on bailing early, when Nico got tired) had turned into me spending the evening working for no reimbursement yet again.

Things only went downhill from there when the party got overbooked and turned from a family affair into two separate parties: one for adults and one for children with the children only paraded briefly around the adult party like peacocks. As things grew further, the speeches from sponsors and magazine-related peeps grew and grew until the program started to resemble a press conference more than an actual party.

Christian and Nico still came with me, but after the dress I was forced to wear freaked Nico out to the point that he wanted nothing to do with me, they both headed home to a take out dinner and some movies, leaving me behind with the ruins of my own doing. I sucked it up and played it out.

Dinner was actually served early for once and I managed to get the entire thing wrapped up forty minutes before planned, which I felt was a pretty awesome feat (on paper, the party was intended to be FOUR hours long, which is a really long time, especially if the majority of the people you’re throwing the party for bail directly after dinner, which they, of course, did).

Yet when it was all done, I wasn’t exhilarated nor even relieved. I was just tired. Too tired to relay the events of the evening in a suitably scintillating manner, or so it seemed, as Christian’s attention couldn’t be kept for more than ten minutes before he started complaining about wanting to go to sleep.

Such was Saturday night.

Bummer.