(Posted by Dave)

Ah, there’s nothing like spending four hours at the Chinese equivalent of the INS to make you appreciate a very cold mediocre Chinese beer! The beer in question is “Snow”, which, due to a quirk of Chinese label design, I usually read as MONS. It’s a step or two down from Heineken, but about three steps better than Milwaukee’s Best. A cold half-liter bottle from the corner store sets me back 3 RMB (45 cents or so), so I can’t complain too much.

As for my time at the Sichuan Provincial Immigration Authority (spent waiting for them to examine our Foreign Expert Certificates and take quick webcam photos of us and the kids), let me just say that I’m very thankful for Luo Bou, the assistant at the university’s foreign affairs department. You know the kind of person that can wade through a sea of red tape without batting an eyelash? The kind of person who tackles 5 page forms in triplicate like Indiana Jones talking out evil Moroccan assassins? That would not be me. That’s Luo Bou. All we had to do was keep our kids entertained and looking cute for the officials who were entering our information, and Luo Bou did the rest.

Now, as for our three-hour physical exam that we needed to get last Friday before we could receive our aforementioned Foreign Expert Certificates, that’s another story. A story rather long on culture shock and rather short on soap, salvaged ever so gracefully by a wonderful western brunch at Pete’s Tex Mex Cuisine. It will be funny sometime. I think. We’ll make sure and tell it to you then...