Reestablished Contact

As you may or may not know, the Chinese government has blocked internal access to some websites. Mostly, they're social networking sites - Facebook, Twitter, and more importantly for this blog, blogspot. So, no, I did not abandon the blog for greener pasteurs as soon as I reached China. I only yesterday bought access to a proxy server that allows me to access these sites (props to Oriana are due for that).

I will confess that I have very little time to blog at the moment. So I will keep it brief. After arriving on Tuesday, August 24th, we stayed in our Tsinghua University dorms and oriented ourselves somewhat. We bought phones, bikes, and learned how to get around campus. Friday the 27th we left for our travel seminar. This would be a 13-day journey across Southern and Western China, in Yunnan and Sichuan province. We visited Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang. Currently I am in Shang-ri La. Tomorrow we will leave for Chengdu.

Things are, as to be expected, a grab-bag of awesome, terrible, alright, and mundane. It is very hard to work and keep in contact with the States, however.

I'll see you all later. I need breakfast.