I was amused by the headline a while back that read: "Bush Sends Rice to Japan". We made our own headline today: "Midwest Couple Sends Rice and Son to Japan." Here is the story:
Yesterday, son Andy did his final packing for his trip to China scheduled for today. He bought 5 or 6 gifts to bring to his contacts in China. He wanted to bring "local" gifts and found a wine bottled in the area, a book with photos of Minnesota, chocolate from a local shop and MN grown wild rice. My nephew Peter, who has traveled there on business several times, agreed our rice might be interesting to the Chinese.
Today is the day he journeys to China for his summer research job with a group from his University. Jon and I awoke at 3:00am before our alarm sounded. Andy was quick to follow. Rubbing the sleep out of our eyes, grabbing a bite and downing a cup of java, we made it to the airport a few minutes past the 4:30 am requested meeting time. I decided to stay with son Andy until I heard he had his boarding pass and no problems checking in.
We got the news the first flight to Newark had been cancelled. S.N. A. F. U. Remember what that is an acronym for? They offered to book him 1st class to Beijing. His eyes lit up. Then his group leader stepped up and reminded the agent they were traveling as a group and needed to arrive the same day, preferably on the same flight or at least only two flights. Now the bad news. They probably couldn't get out today. Some of these kids had already traveled from outstate Minnesota to arrive early. We waited 1hr. and 40 min. to see if they would fly today. I think the final plan was to send them to LA for first leg and then to Tokyo, then to Beijing. I haven't heard anything different from him since we got home. Andy was delighted to be going to Japan, even though he will probably only see the airport. His passport has a lot of different country stamps. Hopefully the son and his rice will arrive in China. Otherwise, maybe he can make some new friends in Japan with his wild rice. It's going to be a wild ride today but at least he started it going west instead of east to China.
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