Americans don't know what persecution is. Well, White Americans, anyway ( Read more... )

01/17
[January 17, Harbin to Jakarta (click to open)]Today started out painfully early as I had to get up at 3:45 to get out of the house in time. Even living as close to the third ring road as I do, it's still about an hour to the airport. It didn't help that I had decided, if I packed in time, that I would go out to trivia at the expat hangout for once. I wanted to wax artsy-fartsy with ( Read more... )

So I've been promising to write a report about the trip I took with my friend, Aiden, to Mudanjiang and the Jianpohu Underground Caves, and today I have a stack of work that I need to get done but don't really want to do, so of course now's the time to waste an entire afternoon and evening writing a trip report instead of grading students' papers. ( Read more... )

The phrase, "it's been a long day" takes on new meaning when you become an international traveler. When I traveled to Germany, heading back west always resulted in adding about nine hours to my day ( Read more... )

For under 5,000元, right in the middle of Spring Festival! I'd say I did good ( Read more... )

Watch this space. I plan to write a first impressions blog on taking the bus this week. Sometime soon...

But tonight was a special adventure. I had a feeling in my gut that I really ought to take a taxi.

• It's the same gut feeling that told me something was going to go wrong on my trip home last August (dual brake failure)...
• ...and on the way to ( Read more... )

Today is the day! I'm flying from DIA to SeaTac at 11, then from SeaTac to Beijing in the afternoon. I have an overnight layover in Beijing, and I'll land in Harbin (which I fly right over on my way to Beijing) on Monday morning (Sunday afternoon here). So long, Meigguo (America). Wo qù Zhōngguèn!