Tag Archives: travel

The End

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The time has come my friends, the end has arrived.

You may have noticed that my blog posts have been increasingly lacking in quantity and quality over the past few months.

The truth is, not to sound harsh but I think I’m over this whole blogging thing. This blog was my lifesaver during my year as a single-parent, and has been a great way to share Charlotte stories with friends and families back home. But now I find I just don’t have the time or energy to put into this little blog anymore, and when I do there are other things that I’d rather do instead. And it doesn’t help that there is a whole other facet to my life that I don’t talk about here, including my work, and something else going on in my personal life (ooh, mystery….)

I truly appreciate all the support I’ve gotten from you guys, all the comments and likes and shares. And although I’m shutting this baby down, I do still hope to find time to keep up with my favourite bloggers, so the blogosphere wont totally be rid of me ;)

And for those of you who are wondering how exactly this story ends?

J. finally realized that taking Charlotte on a cruise was just crazy-talk; we instead agreed that, while I was on a business trip last week, J. and Charlotte would spend five days in Kobe, Japan. Everybody survived, and may have even had some fun. J., high on his success in keeping Charlotte alive all by himself for five days, now has all kinds of crazy ideas for the two of them.

We have some big travel plans in the future, which include a Singapore/Indonesia trip later this month, a potential New Zealand odyssey in February, and short trips to Mongolia, Korea, and Taiwan, as well as some travel in China. I’m also trying to see if I can squeeze in a solo trip to Bhutan at some point. And pretty soon we’ll be starting to think about our move back to Canada, which should happen sometime next summer.

Charlotte continue to grow like a weed. Her Chinese skills are truly amazing, she knows stuff I don’t even know! And she is maturing very quickly too: the other night when I squeezed her tight and called her my little girl she got very insulted and insisted that she was big now. Well, she is almost 3 years old, and she is over 3ft tall. But she will always always be my little baby girl.

And, just like that, we all lived happily ever after :)

The end.

Peace out!

This is what happens when you take a blonde toddler out and about in China

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Charlotte, with her pint-sized features, porcelain-white skin, and flowing blonde hair, is pretty much a super-star here in China.

Seriously, I now understand what it’s like to be a celebrity, or at least the mother of one.

Wherever we go, strangers gawk, point, giggle, smile, and wave like crazy. Some of them get a little too ambitious and try to touch Charlotte, and are promptly slapped away by her overprotective security detail mama-bear.

Most of the time though, they just want to take her photo. Or have their photo taken with her.

To prove I’m not exaggerating, we undertook a little experiment during a recent two-day trip to Shanghai: we photographed all of Charlotte’s adoring fans as they photographed her, dragged their kids into photos with her, or took their own photos with her. Here lies the results:

Bribing Charlotte with a weird flashy ball of plastic

Best friends? Maybe not…

Charlotte was trying really hard not to hit this guy

 

Distracted by bubbles!

Charlotte worried about how I’m about to rip this woman’s greasy hands off of my child

A panda-bear sighting at the park? Nope, just Charlotte sitting down long enough for a crowd to gather

 

 

I Hate Flying (Shh, don’t tell)

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I know I’m usually all “ooh, travel with a baby is so fun, and so worth it, and aren’t I so awesome for taking my daughter all over the world without totally losing my mind” but I can’t hide it any longer: I don’t always enjoy travel, and I don’t love every part of it.

In fact, I hate, hate, flying.

We just returned from a few days in Shanghai and nearby Hangzhou, famous for its (over-rated but still pretty) West Lake. Everything went totally smoothly, Charlotte was an angel, and we had a great time. But still, the flying totally sucked.

What is it exactly about flying that I so deeply loathe? Well, since you asked…

I Hate Flying Because:

1. I can’t stand the ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality: hurry to the airport, wait in line forever to check in. Hurry through security and customs, wait forever to board. Hurry to board, wait forever for take-off. Hurry to get off, wait forever for luggage.

2. Airplane bathrooms. Need I say more? Now, imagine it with a squirmy toddler who likes to touch everything, and who thinks it’s fun to visit the airplane bathroom every 20 minutes.

3. Airplane food used to be good, ok maybe not actually good but certainly edible. Then airlines got cheap. Now, if food is offered at all, it’s pretty nasty. The dinner selection on last night’s flight: pork with rice, or pork with noodles. Neither were edible. And that whole buy-on-board concept drives me crazy. Why can’t they just charge me an extra $10 for my ticket, and then give me a nice “free” sandwich? It would just be so much more pleasant.

4. My luggage usually comes last. Pretty much the only time that it doesn’t come last is when it doesn’t come at all. Which is not fun when you have a 30 lb kid sleeping in your arms and you desperately need the damn stroller to make an appearance before your arms fall off.

5. Customs people are mean. When I studied in the US, the US customs guards would not let me through without making me cry first. I resisted at first, which resulted in missed flights (which resulted in lost luggage), but quickly learned to turn on the waterworks as soon as I handed over my passport. I’m pretty sure they were also mean in Russia, but luckily I couldn’t understand what they were yelling at me about.

Flying amnesia is so not fair. Whenever I fly, I always grumble “what was I thinking? I’m never ever flying again.” This usually lasts a few days post-flight, but then I slowly start thinking about somewhere else I want to go, and after a couple of weeks I’m scouring flight deals, brushing off long layovers and super-late arrivals, until it’s time to go to the airport and once again I remember, “oh yeah, I hate this. What was I thinking?”

I know once I get a good night’s sleep and stop smelling like airplane I’ll be back to my pretentious travel-mom-extraordinaire self again. And in fact, after this rant I must say I do feel a bit better :)

What do you hate about flying? Or, more importantly, is there anything you like about flying?