This morning I booked my first spur of the moment trip to China - all of my prior trips have always been planned out several months in advance but not this one. Last night my wife and I were chatting with her parents and brothers via FaceTime and after we finished I could tell that my wife was a bit depressed/sad due to the fact that the Mid Autumn Festival holiday is coming up and she will not be able to spend it with her family. My wife is from Xiamen and there the Mid Autumn Festival rivals that of the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) in popularity and it is her favorite holiday.
This year the Mid Autumn Festival falls on September 12 although in Xiamen it is celebrated for the entire month. I very much enjoy it as well because of all the moon cake gambling that goes on every night at all the restaurants in the city. I need to burn up a lot of vacation time by the end of the year anyway so I decided what the heck and booked us some airline tickets this morning. My wife doesn't know yet as I want it to be a big surprise for her - I am going to try and keep it a secret right up until we leave.
We haven't been back to China in a while and are overdue for a visit so this will work out nicely. Ordinarily we would have gone back this past February for Chinese New Year but our son was born that month so of course we couldn't go. I had to send my son's passport off to a visa service in Houston today in order to get his Chinese visa - we are leaving on September 4th which should be plenty of time to get the visa & passport back as it usually takes a week for me to get my visas back. I actually had to sneak my wife's National ID card out of the house this morning so that I could send a copy of it in with our son's visa application. So in a little less than 3 weeks, we should be in China.
