all aboard!

The journey begins! Mom and Pop Kelly left KC yesterday at 2pm and should be landing in London in about five hours. I hope the camera batteries are well charged so we can see every bit of their first hemisphere's offerings. They're taking two weeks to get to Beijing, and after this flight to London, it's trains the whole way! I'm highly envious. As this "let's visit the kids" trip turned into an anniversary celebration, Megan observed that their tour 'round the world is just like Dad buying Mom some commemorative bling. Mom said she thinks she'll prefer the train trip. I'm hoping their butts and morales hold out long enough to deliver them to the PRC in good spirits.

Dad has intricately planned out what to do at each stop along the way: coffee here, Belgian chocolates there (and maybe a gift box to go?), homestays in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and then back to Moscow to board the Trans Siberian. While crossing Russia (anyone else wonder what Siberia looks like in January?) the train has a Russian-style dining car, then for the couple days in Mongolia it gets switched out for a Mongolian dining car, and the last day through China will provide a chopsticks primer before they disembark at our rendezvous point.

Now that we're in our last days of class/exams, I'm getting really excited to see (the parents obviously, but also,) what the Chinese consider the center of the world: Beijing. True to form, I'm most excited about the food there. I recently learned that each province has an official restaurant and hotel for their government officials to stay at while oiling the bureaucratic wheels in the hub of the machine. The restaurants fly in staff and ingredients from their provinces and are open to anyone. I'm trying to figure out which provinces we won't physically get to, but whose cuisine we should try out. If our dining plans aren't as intricately plotted as the rest of the trip, Megan and I will get a big F- as research assistants. So far the list only consists of a couple of these province restaurants and a Xinjiang spot (the westernmost province/home of the Uighurs).

Simultaneously descending on Beijing is Loreta and her friend/student Casper, and the Valder party: Jeff and Claire, their two friends coming over from Nebraska, and our beloved Vence. No one's really looking forward to the January temperatures, but the company should keep us all preoccupied with more important things. Can't wait!