My Little Dumplings!

Maisie cracks me up. Every day, she wakes up and says, “What’s today, Mommy?” I guess for her, it’s like that movie, “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.” When I said we were getting a new guide, she said, “Good. Richard is terrible.” She’s also quite a mimic.

As was typical with our bad guide in Beijing, he had the timing all wrong. He made us leave the hotel at 7:30, so we could then wait two hours and fifteen minutes at the most boring airport in the world. Thank God the guide here in Xi’an is fabulous. Jessica - or something like that. She has a very rehearsed script, but it’s quite detailed and full of interesting tidbits about China’s third largest city. However, if we ask her a question not in the script, it totally throws her. The best news is that she has a four-year-old girl and so she gets the whole kid thing. Our driver also seems to love kids. When Hudson was WAILING in the car on the way from the airport because he needed a nap, they were both really understanding. What a relief! They think Hudson is beautiful. Everybody just wants to be near him. I feel like I’m soon going to start hearing The Carpenters, “Close to You” playing when we walk down the street.

She is also pretty funny about trying to teach us Chinese. I’m terrible with easy languages. Mandarin?! 

After we checked into our hotel, we took an electric car tour - an electric, open bus of sorts - around the top of the city wall, the most well-preserved of all the city walls in all of China. As in all Chinese cities, the inside portion is the old town and outside is the newer area of the city. Xi’an is the oldest city in all of China. If our kids were bigger, we could have rented bikes and ridden on the wall. Bummer. As my friend Denise says, there’s only two kinds of travel: First Class and With Kids. Ha!

The tour was fascinating. Inside the city were some buildings in pretty bad disrepair. People had laundry hanging from their windows and the city just looked rundown. Outside the wall were these big, impressive new buildings. It’s not like Xi’an has any kind of fabulous skyline, but there are still some nice structures here. 

Xi’an is known for dumplings so we did what all good visitors here do: we visited a dumpling house. The tour operator arranged a special class where we actually got to learn to make dumplings before we ate them. We’re not just talking half-moon shaped dumplings. Oh no - that would be too easy. No, these dumplings were shaped like fish, pigs, peacocks, monkey faces and the like. I was actually pretty good at making the shapes, but sucked at rolling the dough into discs. Tom was just the opposite. Together, we could actually have people over for dumplings some night - except we don’t know how to cook them once they’re made! Ha!

Maisie had fun just playing with the dough and flour. Hudson wasn’t interested at first, then he wanted to wear the chef hat and play in the flour, too. Great - as long as their happy, we’re happy.

My daddy used to call me “Dumpling” because he said I was good on the inside. I told Maisie that and now she wants me to call her “Dumpling.” Truth is, she and Hudson have both been incredibly good on this trip. They are doing some hard traveling and while they both lose it on occasion, they’re fairly intrepid. I couldn’t be prouder of them both. So many people said we were crazy to do this. From a luggage standpoint, they’re right. Still - the way I look at it is we can either hang out in their narrow, somewhat boring world or they can come exploring the planet with us. As hard as this can be at times, it’s so wroth it. Tom agrees depending on what time of day you ask him. There are nights - like tonight - when we’re stuck in the room, but that’s rare and not so bad.

When we go back, I’m going to do a slide show for Maisie’s class about Singapore and China. Maybe I can get some dough and have the kids made dumplings? Then serve ones we buy from a restaurant? It’s worth pondering.

The dumpling dinner wasn’t all that great. The dumpling dough was kind of nasty, especially after eating dumplings at the place we so love in Singapore. Heck, even American dumplings are better in texture. BUT - what was cool is that the duck shaped dumplings had duck inside, the fish ones had fish and the like. 

Our kids were like Jack Sprat and his wife. He ate no fat and she ate no lean so together they licked the platter clean. Maisie liked eating the dough. Hudson liked eating the stuffing, the cured beef and the raw cucumbers. Success!

Thank God our hotel here is FAR nicer than the Days Inn in Beijing. That place gave me the willies. When I FINALLY got Internet services this morning - that only lasted for just a tiny while, I sent a nasty email to the tour operator who booked our trip. He called all the future guides and hotels so that’s good news. No wonder our guide is bending over backwords making sure everything runs smoothly.

Meanwhile, I’m a little homesick, especially because my brother’s girlfriend is pretty sick. She has to have a gallbladder surgery which may postpone their trip to see us the week after we get back. Also this week, my brother’s business partner had a large mass removed on Wednesday which is cancer. He needs me home and I need to be home for him. It’s not like I’m going to Texas to be with him, but at least in New York, I’m only a phone call away.

I suppose the best news is that my fever finally broke. After last night’s 103, I was pretty worn out battling chills. Tonight, I just have the worst cold of my life which I’ll take any day over fever.