China Journal Post 5 -- Location, Location, Location

I'm in the city of Guiyang, in the province of Guizhou.  The city is pronounced:  Gooey- yong, and rhymes with "long".   The city motto is: "No more than three steps without a hill; no more than three days without rain; and no more than three coins in anyone's pocket."

We are exactly 12 hours off from Eastern Time.  Oh, and half the time, it's already tomorrow here, which means you're living in yesterday half the time, from my perspective.   When you're getting ready for bed at 9 pm, I'm already at work at 9 a.m. the next morning. 

See the pin in the map.  Beijing is to the northeast of me, about as far as Washington D.C. is from Houston.

China Journal Post 4 -- Forbidden City

The Forbidden City ... isn't forbidden anymore.

Here I am with my roommate, Saebra. 

The internet here sucks.  Bigtime. 

China Journal Post 3 -- Great Wall

Guess Where I Am?

No, this isn't the WDW railroad at Disney.

No, this isn't I-81.

No, this isn't the Appalachian Trail.

China Journal Post 2 - Arrived in China

Arrived safely.  Beijing is great.  Very smoggy, though.

Today we saw the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and the National Museum.  Wow! Then we saw an amazingly awesome totally sweet kung fu show! Pretty awese.

I bought a bunch of postcards but have no way of sending them yet. At twenty cents a piece though its probably gonna be more expensive to mail them than it was to Buy them!

I'd love to blog myself (rather than have Dad do it for me) and post pics but unfortunately the only time the internet works is when I don't have my computer with me, and we aren't supposed to have access to Blogger anyway. 

I'm certainly having fun.  Lotsa Culture Shock, with capital letters.   Food's horrible. Oh, and people spit and pick their noses in public.  But it's fun.

Tomorrow we go to the Great Wall.

China Journal Post 1 - Leaving

My dad is posting this for me.  I don't have access to Blogger, or Google, or Facebook, or almost any of the traditional "Western" social networking tools.

But I DO have access to my gmail account.  Please feel free to email me using my bopnopper9 at Gmail account.

I left Seattle-Tacoma airport (SeaTac for you seasoned travellers) where I had been visiting my sister and her husband (mom and dad came out to Seattle too).  Departure date: August 21.   Alaska Airways was supposed to fly me to San Francisco to meet my group, but alas:  for some reason the kiosk said it couldn't find my reservation.   My dad, who was flying to Denver later than morning, also discovered his Alaska Air reservation wasn't in there either.  Go figure.

After spending most of our extra buffer hour in line, everything smoothed out.

Met my group in San Francisco airport without problem.  Off to Beijing for a couple days' orientation and tours.