I tramped through time at the count of jump
Ruby* Went On Vacation Where She Didn't Do Much
But She Did Make Friends With An Imperial Palace Lion** And That's Got To Count For Something.
This tale is actually little to do with the time I spent in China. Nobody's really interested in bouts of food poisoning, deafness, babies, international schools, orphanages, and other people's vacation photos, right?*** Rather, it's the story of how I left China. Because I like doing things backwards, or something. Actually, I haven't got a ton of pictures from my trip because:
1. It turns out that when you're the one holding the camera you don't get photographed all that much.
2. My camera loves to mock me. If I took ten pictures of something I'd be lucky to get one that was not blurry beyond all recognition.
This picture shows the closest I got to looking out a plane window. On all of my flights we were forced to keep the shades down because it was sleepy time. Or maybe it was Make Ruby Cry With Disappointment time. I wanted to see the Great Wall, dammit! And Russia! How often do I get that opportunity? But noooo. It's enough to make you want to kick a flight attendant.
I actually got yelled at for this, like a six year old who won't keep her hands inside the bus.
So right. I started off in Shenyang where I had two hours to kill before my two hour flight back to Beijing. Then I had to figure out what to do with the eight hours before my fourteen hour flight to New Jersey. Then I had all of ten minutes to make it to the plane to Chicago which was another two hours followed by a two hour car ride home. My math skills are less than stellar but by my count that's thirty hours of travel. With a fourteen hour time change. Mustn't forget that.
Does anyone care? Probably not. But my point is, in between brutally maiming innocent bystanders with my luggage as I dashed madly about airports, I had a lot of time to kill. Lucky for me, Captain Kirk decided to show up.
Admit it, you didn't see that coming.
I photographed it for posterity's sake. He sat atop my gum bottle and told me that I had to help him or the world as we knew it would end. Obviously it didn't, so you can thank me later.
Little Kirk was a tiny bit confused. See, you know he's a toy and I know he's a toy but he was having a bit of difficulty grasping that concept. So I decided I'd go online to prove to him that he wasn't the real deal. Only excepting that plan was foiled because I couldn't find my power converter.
Knowing battery time would be limited, we agreed that computer usage must be reserved for only the most important of tasks.
Hearts totally qualifies.
We never actually got online because I couldn't figure out the network. It's like it was all written in Chinese or something.
Over an extremely nutritious meal, I patiently explained to Kirk that he was suffering from Buzz Lightyear syndrome. I guess he missed Toy Story because he just looked at me like I was insane. I was getting a lot of that, actually. Look at the crazy foreign woman taking pictures of the doll! Ahem, action figure.
After this Kirk had to tinkle. He refused to let me take him in the ladies room.
Then he had to go flower diving because he said he lost his phaser and it must have fallen out when he was violating the foliage.
I showed him to the spiffy, big ol' dragon wall thingy that was in the middle of the airport. I thought perhaps he could climb it and get a bird's eye view of things.
Unfortunately that did not end well. If you will permit me to point out the falling luggage, turned ankle, and tipping vase? This is a hardcore action scene right here. Quality entertainment.
Also, yes, I know I travel in style. There's nothing that says fashionista quite like yoga pants and dirty sneakers.
You better believe that after I righted the vase I hauled ass from the crime scene like my life depended on it. Having surgery in China (messy business to do with eardrums) was unnerving enough. The last thing I wanted was to add "detained by airport security" to my list of frightening Chinese experiences.
It's not like my evacuation would have stopped them from stopping me. And it's true that pretending nothing at all happened would likely draw less attention. But fancy logic has no place here.
I thought it best to lay low for awhile. I told Kirk to sit down and shut up. The sitting he got right off, but the shutting up eluded him. He was insistent that he was the real Kirk and he didn't know how he came to be in this land of giants but he had to get back to his ship.
He dove in my bag and inspected my schedule. Since the only time he could communicate with the Enterprise was many hours ago, he would tag along with me back home where it was still yesterday. We would use the flight to go back in time!
Who knew Kirk was such a dumbass?
I always did prefer Picard.
I wasn't even listening anymore because I had found a panda lurking in the terminal wild and that trumps delusional action figure every time. Well, she's more accurately a bear wearing a panda hat. A faux panda or Paux, if you will. Thus Po.
Whatever, it worked in my head.
I was sick of toting around two suitcases, a carry-on, messenger bag with laptop, and an obnoxious miniature space captain, so I tamed the wild beast and convinced it to become Kirk's valiant steed.
They were fast friends.
Turned out to be a really lucky thing we'd stumbled on Po beause half the time only she could read the monitors. Faux pandas are the best.
We boarded the plane with no problems at all and settled in for the long flight. Kirk and Po ate my first in-flight snacks while I was distracted. On a flight that long, every pretzel counts so this was a big deal. But it's hard to be mad at cute stuffed animals so I let it go.
Po and I cuddled up and were content to take advantage of our personal entertainment system screen thingy. We fast forwarded to all the musical numbers in Phantom of the Opera, Oklahoma, and the King and I, partook in a mini Harry Potter marathon, watched a few episodes of Futurama, and squealed with glee when we discovered the Hana Yori Dango movie. Turns out Po is a J-drama fan. Po is so awesome.
She's great at making friends, too. While I listened to violin concertos and tried to nap, she chatted up everyone in line to the bathroom.
Turns out Kirk was causing the hold up. He'd raided the flight attendant's cart and got all boozed up when nobody was looking. He wasn't feeling so hot.
He then used the sink as his own personal jacuzzi. Clearly I needed to keep a better eye on him.
That might have been easier if at any point in the flight the lights were on. Darkness nearly the whole damned way! Hey Continental, nobody needs fourteen hours of sleep! Don't get me wrong; I understand the reasoning behind it. Your eyes going all blind cavefish saves you from thinking about the fact that your entire body is completely numb from sitting in the same seat for an eternity. I know it disctracted me from wondering if I had legs anymore.
Kirk tried to find a way to the engines to maybe modify them to get us on U.S. soil a little faster but he couldn't find any plane schematics laying around. Imagine that. He was fully on the up and up on plane evacuation, though, which was good because I always find myself zoning out when they're explained. Because if I ignore it there's no way it can happen, right? Behold the powers of delusion!
(This might be an appopriate time to mention that every time I boarded a plane on this trip I got At the Bottom of Everything by Bright Eyes stuck in my head. Holy hell, not helpful.)
This was the only meal I got to eat because neither Kirk nor Po could identify any of the food involved in its making.
So now we've got to fast forward to home because I didn't take any pictures in between what with the mad rush through customs and security to the teeny tiny plane to Chicago and the ridiculously loud frat boys that surrounded me. These are not the sort of conditions that lead to grown women wanting to play with dolls.
Here's the part where you assure me that I am undeniably lame but adorably so.
Anyway, Po took to the land of Ruby like she was born to it. She claimed the pretty ugly chair as her own and poured over my Chinese fashion magazines.
She also stole some of my other souvenirs. Dragon figurines, emperors of China playing cards, painted scrolls, maps, snow globes, and chopsticks (among other things) were not to her liking but sumptuous fabrics and pearls are a fake panda's best friends.
I got the parasols. Because I love me my parasols.
She also let me keep my panda hat. Probably because she already had one.
Who in their right mind wouldn't want a panda hat worn most commonly by Chinese kindergarteners?
Surprisingly, it's warmer than the knit hat I was wearing in that first picture at the Forbidden City. And a steal at only five kwai, i.e. less than a dollar!
At this point you're probably wondering what happened to Little Kirk and his quest to return to the Enterprise.
After he failed to connect with his crew he tried to wander off into the sunset in shame.
(Or maybe he just went to go relieve himself outside. His arm is at a suspicious angle there.)
I staged an intervention and stopped him from his attempted hypothermic suicide. He has been introduced to the world wide web and has accepted his life as an action figure. He currently resides in a ficus with a purple dinosaur in my youngest older brother's dining room.
* Yes, in real life I am currently a chunky brunette with buck teeth. My existence is a crime against beautiful people everywhere, but it's mine.
** That's his happy face.
*** Let me clarify: mine, mine, my brother's, Shenyang China's, Shenyang's again, and mine. (Possibly at a later date I'll share something about the Adventures of Sisterella, milk tea, acrobats, markets, the center of the universe, ceilings of China, and emperors who seem to have really enjoyed freezing temperatures and putting their concubines in great peril.)