so, as I may have mentioned, I dyed my hair.
here are the promised photos:

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It's not a holiday ( Read more... )

It's real nice to be home. I seem to have gotten home at a good time. just in time for ripe cherries (and the best cherry season we've had on this tree in at least 4 years) ripe serviceberries, ripe strawberries in the fields behind our property, and ripe raspberries at the DeLong's ( Read more... )

back noon yesterday.

guess we left the window open a crack. I woke up and my right arm, which I guess was outside the blankets is just covered in bites. I look like I have measles or something. On one arm ( Read more... )

I had planned to sit in the front seat of our car on the second day, but given that Lillian and I weren’t technically allowed to be in some of those areas, the driver made me sit in the back, and let Lillian, who’s ethnically Han Chinese sit up front so as to avoid more trouble.

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Spent another whole day on the road after that. This day was mostly through deserts, with hills and mountains in the distance.

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After that we needed to get to Dunhuang to check out the Mogao Caves, which have a ton of Buddhist art, and catch our plane back to Beijing. We didn’t really get to booking a train ticket far ahead of time, so didn’t know we’d be able to get a sleeper, as it’s a really busy train line, and we also had a tip from Professor Lipman that going by car ( Read more... )

On our next day in town, we had to try to figure out how the fuck to get some money, since most the ATM’s in town didn’t take our cards. Luckily found one I could use and Lillian had some cash to change, so it worked out ok, though we wasted a good deal of time on the endeavor. Next we spent some time trying to figure out how to get to this Tibetan ( Read more... )

We then caught a train to Xining, in eastern Qinghai province. Our first full day in town, we took a ride with a tour group out to Qinghai lake, which is, I do believe, the largest saltwater lake in China. It’s huge. It’s also all at an elevation of about 10,000 feet.

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