Solar Eclipse seen in China from http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/eclipse/

Our daughter Layla is spending 6 weeks this summer in Shanghai.  She called us on Skype the other day (amazing in itself), very excited about two things:  going to see the new Harry Potter movie (I believe it premiered the same day as in US) and even better than Harry Potter, if you can believe it (for those who know Layla, she has LOVED Harry Potter since it came out when she was in 2d or 3d grade and is now going into 11th)…THE SOLAR ECLIPSE.  Now the eclipse is all over the western news (see: http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/21/solar-eclipse-excitement-sweeps-asia/).  But a few days ago i had no idea.  Sophia and i then looked it up on-line and voila:  a once-in-a-few centuries view of the sky!  This just gave us a taste of what other folks are excited about on the other side of the planet. 

It will be interesting for Layla to come home from China and realize most people here had no idea about this singular event for the planet, that she got to experience first-hand.

For more on the eclipse from NASA, see:  http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html.  You and the kids can imagine you’re in Nepal or China or India or Japan seeing it live…