Adventures begin

As we got on the plane from Charlottesville to begin what will be a round-the-world journey, I gave Aidan a surprise present, a copy of The Blue Lotus, one of the Tintin stories that he got interested in after seeing the movie last month (sort of backwards, I know).  And invoking Tintin is appropriate, I hope, since Tintin, boy reporter, goes in the book to Shanghai and Japan--where we are going as well. The book turned out to be a good diversion during a long day of travel and was, Aidan reports, better than the movie. Tintin generally ends up being captured by bad guys and is at one point in The Blue Lotus, given a "madness serum." I hope we can still have fun while avoiding all that.