I am driving Lydia to a classmates birthday party. We are a bit late. We can blame my driving or we can blame China. Yes, it is a China moment.

To get directions to the party was a bit of a challenge as I only had the place name in Chinese. I used the phone number to find the address and English and then used Google maps to get me driving directions. Once on the road I naturally missed the exit which means I had to take the next exit and make a U-turn. On the Beijing expressways this means a 20 minute detour. I found the street I needed to turn onto and it was a disaster. It is a scene a bit hard to describe but one familiar if you’ve spend anytime exploring Beijing. A village surrounded by urbanization. Narrow streets with cards squeezing by in both directions and occasional deadlocks when street obstacles only allowed one way traffic. Everyone, from pedestrians, to bicycles, to carts, to cars, to buses all operating by their self interest.

I needed to make one more turn but I wasn’t really sure of the street name so I missed it. Eventually when the road dead ended into a into a bus depot I knew I was lost. I took out my phone and tried to find the address again and after considerable delay got the correct street name and retraced my steps. Behind a bus. I found the street, made the turn and still could not find the party site. So I did the most humiliating thing possible. I called my co-worker and asked where it was. It turned out it was inside a compound we were just outside of so I parked and we joined the party. I texted Yang that we can leave China anytime.

The party was indoor rock climbing followed by lunch. Lydia had missed most of the rock climbing but one of the teachers was nice enough to give her some extended time. To my amazement and panic she climbed right up to the top. Then the teacher yelled up at her on how to get down. Such is the confidence building instruction. On the way down Lydia was facing us and the instructor, who is Chinese, was yelling at her to face the wall. I told the instructor that she can speak to Lydia in Chinese since her Chinese is better than her English. The instructor told me, with conviction, that she did but Lydia still didn’t face the wall. I told the instructor that maybe Lydia didn’t know how to face the wall. Lydia’s harness got stuck at one point and that didn’t seem good and she had to climb up a bit to get unstuck. I told her to face the wall and to spin a bit to do so. She finally did and then descended smoothly.

Here’s pics of Lydia starting her climb and then at the top.