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A jet-setting kind of town

By Don Frances

MAYBE YOU'VE been wanting to visit China to check out this hell-for-leather economy everybody's talking about. Or do some Google searches.

Or maybe you're like most of us and always wanted to walk the Great Wall.

Thanks to a deal being offered by the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce, you can do all these things in a single week. For a packaged rate, Chamber members and their guests will take an eight-day trip later this year -- Nov. 4 to 12 -- visiting all the must-see sights in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, etc.

It's an enticing offer: $1,300 includes round-trip tickets, hotel accommodations, bus tours, an English-speaking guide in each city, three squares a day, "Chinese governmental official banquets" (whatever those are), and all fees and taxes. The trip also offers meetings with Chinese business leaders, if you're so inclined.

The Chamber is holding a briefing on the trip on Feb. 23, and asks that those interested RSVP to ajauregui@chambermv.org. The briefing will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, 840 E. El Camino Real. ...

ANOTHER announcement regarding international relations: Bay Area Adoption Services, a Mountain View nonprofit, is holding a presentation on adopting children from around the world, and particularly Ethiopia.

BAAS facilitates the adoption of orphaned children from less fortunate lands -- and lately, thanks to a certain Hollywood bombshell, Ethiopia is a focus of this effort. Says the group's announcement, "Ethiopia has come to the limelight with the recent adoption of Zahara, an Ethiopian infant girl, by Angelina Jolie."

The free presentation will take place Feb. 22, 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the group's offices, 465 Fairchild Drive, Suite 215. For more information call Janet Shirley at (415) 499-8037, or write baasadopt@yahoo.com. ...

CONGRATULATIONS are in order to Leslie Friedman -- dancer/scholar extraordinaire, artistic director of the Lively Foundation in San Francisco, and Mountain View resident -- for receiving a Fulbright Scholar Award, which comes with an invitation to work and teach at the National Academy of Theater and Film in Sofia, Bulgaria.

This is the second Fulbright award for Dr. Friedman (the title is due to a Ph.D. in British history from Stanford, where she also taught before leaving academia to dance). Her first came with a lectureship to India in the early '80s. Since then she's been dancing her way around the globe, and shattering cultural and political barriers along the way.

Mountain View, it seems, is more hooked into the world at large than anyone ever imagined. ...

By the way, Friedman's Lively School offers dance classes in Mountain View for kids and adults. To learn more, call (650) 969-4110 or write livelyfoundation@sbcglobal.net. ...

SPEAKING OF DANCING, here's a strange bit of news from Southern California: Two graduates of Mountain View High School, now students at UCLA, will be taking part in this year's UCLA Dance Marathon, "a 26-hour no-sitting, no-sleeping dance-a-thon."

What? Twenty-six solid hours of hopping around, without once resting your dogs? Who came up with this, Donald Rumsfeld?

While it may sound cruel and unusual, Aviva Altmann and Katherine Santoso, our local reps, wouldn't take part if it weren't for a good cause. The Dance Marathon, to be held next weekend, Feb. 18-19, is expected to raise $200,000 for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. To find out more, or make a pledge, contact Jennie Herriot at (650) 245-1527. ...

THIS LATEST full moon seems to have led to one of our liveliest Police Logs in recent memory (see page 4), featuring more mayhem than any local could want. Some of you are avid Police Log readers, I've heard, so now seems a good time to warn you: We're considering moving it to an inside page, freeing up the valuable space up front. Does this make you happy? Worried? Let us know. As always, we welcome your input.

Don Frances is editor of the Mountain View Voice. Send any items, tips, nods or feedback to dfrances@mv-voice.com.