En route

Safely at Hatfield-McCoy, waiting at the gate in plenty of time.  Just as well to be here, not  Chicago, after all.  I ran into Jo Perez, heading to Honolulu. And someone from Sutherland at CHO, heading for San Francisco. You get to know people you have known in other contexts... Sat next to a young man Jacob's age doing just that thing I'd sent him an article about, getting Chinese students through the admissions process to American colleges--a new job, though he had taught in a tiny village for a year earlier.

The layers of clouds heading south were lovely. Like looking into an aquarium-- except that we live in two dimensions. Watching the layers move relative to each other and the plane was like bad computer animation. Varieties of textures, densities, and brightness. I wonder how I missed the pinky dawn clouds?  I should try a pastel drawing of that on the gray paper.

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Got out of Hatfield-McCoy with no fuss, now in Detroit. Looks like an airport. Animated Chinese being spoken, heavily accented compared to the tapes. Beautiful shiny red shuttle El rushes through the terminal intermittently like a 50s sf movie. No internet.

TSA

First time through, they gave me a modified pat-down because of my hijab; a summer dress below the knees. And they found my bottle of water. After clearing security, I went out to drink my water and had to do the whole thing again, but for some reason I couldn't get through. Probably because I was full of, you know, water. So I got the big pat-down, and was found to not be carrying an obvious bomb. Hurray!
Several other people on this flight are going to Hatfield-McCoy, Detroit, and then veering off to Hong Kong. I will be able to listen to some kind of Chinese.

And, of course it will be an opportunity to get to really know Jacob and Max. We might be able to have different kinds of conversations, with me in their place, and with them the experts.
Yesterday at a wine tasting, I saw the vintage on the bottle-- 2005-- and realized I could not immediately remember what I was doing then, Was that the summer we were in Argentina and Ecuador? Or was it the summer Jacob was in Beijing for the first time? It's true that when the quotidian is pretty stable, one doesn't really remember in a discriminating way, and when memory is jogged, only sequentially. A good reason to keep pictures, journals, etc. Not sure electronic things fix memory the same way a sketch/journal does. Or how feasible it will be on this trip, depending on internet access. Could write word docs and upload, and even scan sketches when I get back...

Initiation

A new blog, for my trip  to China. It is looming. Will I be able to use the few words of Chinese I have? Will I make myself understood, and v/v? How will it smell, taste, feel, sound? What will I come away with, in the end?  Time to start reviewing itineraries, even though I know things will in fact be different.