We just returned from our two week vacation in China. If I were an eloquent person I would compose a sentence that talked about everything and sounded good. But I am just wordy, not eloquent so I will say is was amazing and completely solidified for me the idea that we will travel with Thomas as much as we can as frequently as we can. I will admit that by day 10 he was a little tired and possibly a little antsy and as I am apparently allergic to whatever grows south of Beijing I was a bit low on patience and he did get a bit of some quiet in the corner talks as well as some not so quiet “stop that”s! But if you pretend like that didn’t happen (and please, can we all just agree to that premise) It was absolutely amazing.

Thomas loves history and ate up everything about China. Especially the food. Between him and I, we might have actually eaten all the food in China. If a regular availability of chocolate cake had been available I would likely have kidnapped him and taken up regular expat status somewhere in Suzhou where I would treat my allergies with an ancient Chinese secret, eat lots and lots of fish with heads on them, walk around charging people to take pictures with my son and die happy.

Oh yeah, the paparazzi. I lost count pretty early on. But we can say that China did nothing to deflate the inflated ego of the boy. We were there during summer school holidays and our guides said that meant there were lots of domestic tourists who had limited contact with non-Chinese and would likely ask to take our pictures. I have decided instead that it was simply the red hair. In every single city, in every single tourist attraction, in some restaurants, streets and even one bathroom a Chinese person (usually a child) would ask to take Thomas’s picture or take a picture with him.

The weather was hot and I spent a good portion of the trip high on Benadryl but nevertheless it was one of the most amazing things I have ever done with my child.  I can catalog a hundred moments that I will never forget and I think Thomas has those moments too.  Sometimes it was the search for the best toilet in china (which you can find in the Park Hyatt lobby and in the gift shop area of the observation deck of the Word Financial Tower in Shanghai).  Sometimes it was watching Thomas visit his first Buddhist temple and realizing, no this isn’t a phase, this is a faith he found on his own terms and it is here for a while if not forever.  There was the total eclipse that we had nearly given up on because of the weather forecast to only have the skies clear around 50% and witness the complete totality for the full five minutes.  There was the roof top pools and the “What would Anthony buy?” game.  I am hoping over the next few days to highlight the best moments, funny, touching, moving or just awe-inspiring and tell you about them.

In the meantime, however, let me share with you the fact that I will never ever live in another country for the rest of my life if only because I need American plumbing.  I can’t seem to remember the no toilet paper rule and while I can deal with squat toilets for a bit, I was actually tired of them at the end.  I mostly felt like I suddenly understood why everyone removes their shoes when entering homes here, the floors in the bathrooms?  Not pleasant.  Costa Rica had its own share of plumbing mishaps, including a terrifying moment where our guide claimed that we would have to turn back to the hotel and I feared it was because I was in trouble due to the inability to remember you can’t flush paper anywhere else in the world.  (I later discovered I was not the only one to cause a mishap repeatedly at that hotel)  And while there wasn’t anything quite so gut clenching there were endless rounds of squat toilets and comparisons of the bathrooms with the only other woman on the full tour with us.  I never loved a toilet so much as the one I encountered when walked to customs and immigration in San Francisco and you know that bathrooms have been dismal where you  perk up at the thought of an airplane bathroom!

So while the only time I was even remotely nationalistic was during my entirely too long and embarassing Libertarian period, let me proclaim right now that America does in fact have the best plumbing in the world and I love it for that!  We might not have invented Democracy despite our love of claiming it, but we can flush stuff in toilets!  And they are mighty!  And most of them aren’t even that nasty!  I love you America!

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