One week tomorrow......

Tomorrow is Thursday.

One week from then we will board the ferry for the mainland, leave our beloved island behind, and head for an over nighter at a hotel close to the airport. We are up bight and early for the flight to Beijing by way of San Francisco.

So far I have a small stack of stuff in the kitchen to pack. Passports with Visas, coffee and snacky things, magazines and books. Not a heck of a lot.
The suitcases are resting comfortably in the basement. Something I plan to rectify today.
I am relatively calm. I have done this before. Four times. How lucky am I?

If I am packed by Thursday pm I can go to work on Friday for the weekend way ahead of the game.
Just need my American money for the accommodation and I am ready. That is arranged
for pickup next week. Final assembling on Wednesday and ready for blast off.

Derek and I were having a discussion this morning about Beth and Grace. Since we are
talking 2 preteens with a case of sibling rivalry I may need to pack a parachute for a hasty exit
somewhere during the 12 hour flight to China. After three weeks in country it is anybody's
guess what will transpire. It may be that they will learn something about themselves to and enjoy each other.

I wish I could have taken them individually as I did Isabel. We could have had the one on one time and the trip
would have been theirs alone. We do what we can and it is a big beautiful world out there and we only have so much
time and so much money. I think they are okay with it. Part of me wishes Isabel could have come with us also, but I
am so grateful she had last year and now it is her sisters turn.

Seriously, we are hoping this is a valuable learning curve for the girls. It would have been easier to book
one of the proliferating "homeland" tours and to have someone lead us around to all the usual tourist sites.
That it itself would have been wonderful and we would have seen a lot more than we will doing it ourselves.
But it would cost a whole lot more and the girls would have a very limited idea of what China is. I like to shop with the best of them, but dislike the frenzy some folks engage in and what the China Travel guides think is what we actually want. I have tried
to avoid the rampant consumerism that plaques our society and I don't want it for my girls. I will have a modest list of what we will purchase and try to stick to it.

I am hoping this trip makes our two stop and think and that they "get" some of what we have told them these last few years.

This will be my last trip to China, I imagine, but I am hoping they all will go back to visit, volunteer and explore and to see much more of the country than we ever have. Time will tell.