Tomorrow is the Big Day

Tomorrow morning I fly down to California to work. I start work once I get there, so I hope tomorrow is a slow day. I will blog more after the work day is done. I am a little nervous about everything. I hope things go well!

Do you have Bluetooth enabled phones?

I had a nice conversation with a lady at Qwest. All I wanted were some phones that had Bluetooth capability.

Thank you for using Qwest.com. A Sales and Service Consultant will be with you in a moment. Currently, your estimated wait time is 0 minutes and 2 seconds.

Welcome to the Qwest.com live chat service. My name is Laini. May I please
have your name?

you: Jon Keto
Laini: Hello, how may I help you?
you: I was wondering if any of your phones have bluetooth capability, do you have any?
Laini: We have a bluetooth headset that can be purchased.
you: Does that mean you have a phone with Bluetooth?
you: I am looking for a phone that I can share information, more specifically my address book, between my laptop and my phone.
Laini: We do not have that type of phone at this time.
you: Then why do you sell bluetooth headsets?
Laini: I believe the headsets provide compatibility with other systems.
Laini: It also allows the user to be on the headset without having it wired to the wireless phone.
you: Yeah, but then doesn't the phone need it?
Laini: I am not that familiar with the other aspects of Bluetooth technology. The only thing I am aware of at this time is that certain
headsets are compatible with the Bluetooth wireless headset.
you: Alright. Thanks. I am going to T-Mobile and AT&T now. Have a nice
day!

SACG Playaz vs. 64 Points for Divinity

This evening Eric, Sandra and I went to dinner about 5:00 pm. It was a little early to eat dinner, but we had a place to be. That place was the IMA. The reason we had to be there was to watch my brother play in his basketball game. The winning team was the team who reached 50 points first or whoever was leading after 50 minutes. Sandra was keeping score.

My brother has been practicing with these guys for a couple months now and each Wednesday he plays a game against another team in his league. The competition in the league is not real tough, but everyone likes to play and have fun, so the games are always good.

Tonight my brother played against '64 Points for Divinity'. The game started at 6:00 pm and that is when we got there. No one really had any time to warm and the other team was short a player, so they picked up a guy from the sideline. Even though he was not an official member of the team no one minded. He seemed like a regular player to everyone on my brother's team, so they let him join the other squad. I had seen him play before and I knew he could shoot, so I was a little concerned. No one on my brother's team realized because they were all worried that they did not have sufficient warm up time.

The game starts with the ball in the hands of the opponent. They quickly give it to the man they picked up from the sideline (I will call him 'the pick up' from now on). He quickly drained a 3 pointer. No one seemed worried yet. SACG Playaz move the ball down the court and make a 2 pointer. 64 Points for Divinity bring the ball back up the court and pass it to the pick up and he drains another 3. At this point I was a little worried because I did not want to to see my brother lose. Sandra and I cheer and give my brother's team some support as they score another 2 points.

The score remained pretty close for the next 10 minutes or so, but the opponents never gave up the lead to my brother's team. When Jason from the SACG Playaz, a critical set up man who makes good passes, subbed out I got a little worried. After the substitution I noticed that their defense was weakened because it was less organized. After a few more minutes of play the opponents were up by 6 points. At this point I knew there was a lot of time left because the score was 21 to 15, 64 Points for Divinity.

64 Points for Divinity kept a steady lead until they reached 30 points. At this point the game started to changed. The pick up was not hitting as many 3's as before and he even threw up an air ball. I think he started to get anxious and his teammates were not helping much either. They had a lot of open shots and second chance opportunities , but nothing was falling for them. This is when Jason and Eric connected on a Karl Malone and John Stockton level, with my brother as the Mailman himself. These two players led the team on a 18-2 run. My brother would back his opponent down low and post up. Jason would feed him the ball, Eric would receive the ball, turn and shoot. The shot was almost unstoppable. Other SACG Playaz started to heat up with some sweet drives to middle where they would stop and pull up for the short jumper.

Everyone on the other team seemed to get anxious as they saw the game running away from them. The pick up did something predictable and tried to take the game on his own shoulders by shooting a few more 3's but they did not fall. He made some good feeds to his teammates, but they were unable to capitalize. As time ran out the score was 49-35, SACG Playaz in the lead. What an exciting game! Congratulations to Eric and the rest of his team!

Can SpongeBob SquarePants be one of them too!?

I was reading my friend Tammy's blog the other day and I came across a post about some conservative Christian groups think that SpongeBob SquarePants is gay and they want to ban his show. Here is an article from CNN explaining the story.

I can not believe that more children's shows are being attacked again. I feel like some of these groups have way too much time on their hands to be able associate these shows with the promotion of homosexuality. The article says that one reason for this is that gay people like SpongeBob SquarePants. Does this mean we can then say that drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and watching NASCAR promotes domestic abuse because some people who enjoy these things beat their wives? Where is the relation?

If SpongeBob SquarePants and even Teletubbies can be accused of promoting homosexuality than where do we draw the line? It seems like we are becoming a society of extremes, where there can be no middle ground especially when it concerns homosexuality. Will there be a day when they have to change the rules for crossing streets as a kid? Will it no longer be ok to hold your friend's hand as you cross the street if they are the same sex as you? I can just imagine the organization that distributes these educational videos having to reshoot and edit all their films, so that only little boys and little girls will be shown crossing the street together?

I understand that certain people have their views for different reasons. Religious or not I can respect that, but it seems that some people's level of intolerance have reached a ridiculous level.

Disclaimer: The domestic abuse generalization is not necessarily true. I just used it to make a point.

Physical Education in the U.S.

I have heard from different sources, like documentaries on the American education system, articles in Sports Illustrated and other places that in most American schools the physical education is going the way of the dodo. I know there are schools and programs actively trying to bring new life into the, often times bland phys ed systems in place at a lot of schools. I mean what kid at 8 years old wants to keep doing sit up and push ups every day.

I am not sure why there are not more exciting and interesting forms of physical education, but I think it related to the fact that physical educators don't want to have children get hurt. This is a totally valid reason and I support it, but why don't they want children to get hurt? Are these schools and school districts afraid of getting sued by parents? I think so. I started to think about this in China when my friends from other Universities told me that at least one other college in Beijing had a place for skateboarders to skateboard that was provided by the university. I never saw this 'magical' place, but I have also read articles about universities in Shanghai with the same facilities.

I started to wonder why we don't do that over here. Some universities or schools may have done this already. Actually, I know for a fact there are some high schools in Southern California, which provide such facilities, but this is because their physical education system is geared towards extreme sports. In any case, I feel like most colleges would think there is too much risk involved giving students a place to skateboard.

I fear for the day when there is too much risk involved in going outside of our homes. Too much risk of someone suing another, too much risk of scraping your knee or even too much risk of letting sunlight hit your skin. I don't recall my parent having these sorts of 'risks' in their lifetime and I hope my kids don't have them either.

I am sort of disheartened here in the America where we should have the right to do what we want for pleasure (to an extent), but at the same time our society is so restricted in certain aspects, that is almost as if we can't enjoy a lot of activities we want to. When I see China setting up skateboard parks and universities doing the same I just yearn for a day when skateboarding can have that sort of acceptance level. It is not like there is no tolerance for skateboarders here in the states and it has definitely improved since I was younger, but I think most of the acceptance comes from a small portion of the people and it is supported by a small portion of the people as well. Maybe that is part of the appeal though and I shouldn't ask for more widespread support.

Anyways I have rambled way too long and I don't think I concluded where I should have, if at all. I think I digressed from physical education to skateboarding rants, but with the number of kids being obese these days the education system should be changed, so it is more appealing for kids to participate in physical education.

Public Transportation

When I got back from China I thought I would embrace Seattle's public transportation system simply because they are far less crowded than the subways or busses in Beijing. For the first couple weeks I didn't mind taking the bus, but tonight I was reminded why I didn't like taking the bus before I left Beijing.

The problem with public transportation is that it is public transportation. The public who like to ride the busses in Seattle tend to reek of piss, alcohol and body odor. This funk works it's way into the seats and all the corners of the bus, so when you ride the bus the smell inevitably infiltrates your noise whether you like it or not.

The worst part about public transportation is the public part. It seems like the public like to drink and ride the bus here in Seattle. The thing about the drunk people on the busses is that they are the people too drunk to get into bars or drunk enough to get kicked out of bars, so they always acts like like idiots. I can't stand it.

I want to get a car ...

The Contract has been signed

Only three weeks after getting back to Seattle I have decided to go to California, San Clemente, to work for a company called Omation. They create animated films. Currently they are creating a movie called 'The Barnyard' for Nickelodeon in association with Paramount Pictures.

They needed a person familiar with web development to help them create tools to optimize their pipeline ... that is where I came in. I am really excited about the work and can not wait to start. I am a little nervous about the job though because it seems like the most complicated worked I have have to do. I will let you guys know how it goes.

If you guys think I will be gone for another five or six months then don't worry. I can fly back here each weekend if I want. That means if there are any parties or get togethers on the weekend then I can definitely make it up here to see you guys.

Congrats Matt & Deana

Last night I went to a surprise dinner party for my two friends Matt and Deana. They both turned 23 last week and decided to go to 13 coins to eat dinner. They didn't know their friends, other than Anh and Ryo would be there. We got to hide in the back in a little and yell surprise when they came in. After that we had to move to another table since the room we saved was double booked. Dinner was pretty tasty and I would recommend going to 13 coins for dinner if you want to eat some place nice.

Here are some photos taken by Sandra.

One Great Wedding

I just got back from the wedding of my two friends Andre and Dare. It was a very beautiful wedding. The wedding started at noon and lasted about an hour. I was sitting in the second row near the middle, so I had a good view of the couple as they stood on the stage. It made me happy to see them so happy together. The wedding was held at St. Ignatius Chapel on the campus of Seattle University.

After the ceremony we had the reception in the student center on campus. All the tables were decorated very well. My friends and I spent a little time in the morning putting candles on all the tables and rose petals around the candles, so it was nice to see everything put together for the reception. Everyone ate a good meal and then it was time to eat cake. After we ate it was time to dance. I think this was teh funnest part of the day.

I do not have time to go into detail now, but I have to say it was beautiful day and I wish the two of them the best for years to come.

See the wedding pictures here.

One Week Down

Well it has been a week since I have been back in Seattle. It is nice to be back here, but there is still a large part of me that wants to be back in Beijing. I am not sure if it is because I have only been gone for a week or if it is something more than that. Each time I see my friends online or I get an email I get excited that I can once again get in touch with them. I definitely do not want to lose touch with these friends.

Other than dealing with missing my friends I have been trying to deal with getting reacclimated to this place again. This includes getting used to seeing my friends again. Even though I have had long and strong relationships with a lot of my friends it is still somewhat of a shock to pick up things right where we left off four months ago. All my friends have been nice to me, so it has been pretty easy so far.

School is going alright. I am still playing catch up in a sense. I can not make up some of the tests I missed the first week, but I can definitely get a lot of the reading that I missed done. I am relieved that my classes are finally in English, except for my Chinese reading class. I feel like I am understanding things a lot more now and reading does not seem like such a chore. It is also nice to get back into more of the left brained subjects that I am used to. Learning linear optimization and computer organization and design is all of a sudden a lot more interesting. I hope I can do well in these classes and not succumb to just getting by like I have done in the past.

My next goal is to find another job. I am working for the Asian Languages and Literature department right now, but I think that my project is coming to an end soon. That means I won't have any source of income soon. I am thinking about finding a job where I can do some Java programming because I am getting a little tired of all this php programming I have been doing lately.

A great event coming up tomorrow is my friend's wedding. I want to say Congratulations! to Andre. I am really happy for him. I am really glad to see that he and his soon to be wife, Dare, have been together since high school. They stuck it out through college while attending different schools. Albeit, both schools were in Seattle, but there are plenty of couples who can not even make things work even when they go to the same school. I did not expect otherwise from these two though. They are both great people and I hope to see them together for many happy and joyous years to come.

I wonder who is the next couple to get married. Anyone want to make bets?

Back at Home Again

The four and half months spent in Beijing were probably some of the best months of my life. I had a very great time, but like most things in life it could not last forever. I am happy to be at home, but at the same time I am also sad that tomorrow or the next day I am not going to wake up in my apartment at Tsinghua. I will not be able to go to class with all my friends and then eat the mediocre food at school cafeteria number 10.

My flight was nice. I sat next to a girl from Canada who is studying to be a nutrionist. Neither of us really wanted to be on the plane. We were both leaving people back in Beijing. She had just finished seeing her family for the first time in four years. We both had mixed feelings of leaving the place where we wanted to stay, but knowing we had to go back to the place where we needed to be.

When we landed in Canada we said our goodbyes, she went through customs and I went for the direct transfer to the states. This is where the 'fun' began. As I walked down the skybridge I walked over customs downstairs and passed a sign telling me that anyone on Air China flights were supposed to go this direction. I met a worker at the airport who insistently told me that I was not supposed to be there. I told him that I was on Air China, but he still refused. Anyways, I went back through customs since I knew I did not have a lot of time and I did not want to argue with him. I went through customs and asked where my bags would be and they told me they would be on carousel 24. I went to the carousel, but never say my bags. I went to the nearest help desk and they said my bags were upstairs, so I headed upstairs. Right before I went upstairs I looked back at the carousel and saw one of my boxes. At this point I was asking myself whether or not anyone in this airport knew what was going on. Anyways I worked my way upstairs again by walking past the front door, up an escalator and through the food court. At this point it was 11:30 and my flight was supposed to leave at 12:00. I got in line for a boarding pass and all the while I was thinking about the the guy who told me I was going the wrong way and how he should be fired. I got to the counter at 11:45 and was promptly asked by the woman whether or not I knew my international flight was at noon. After sleeping only a few hours in the past thirty or so hours it was easy to just listen and not tell her that I really wanted to be here 15 minutes before my flight and that I expected with 15 minutes I would have enough time to get on an international flight. I was pretty fed up with this airport by this time. Anyways to make a long story short I ended up getting on my flight after watching a security yell at a man for trying to make sure his luggage was going to the right city. I was also told my luggage was on the same flight, but it arrived in Seattle on the next flight.

The whole trip back was made better when I got back to see all my friends. We went out to dinner at Red Robins to eat some burgers. Even though I was really tired I was excited to talk to everyone after four months.

If anyone is interested, here are photos from my last dinner in Beijing.

Xiao Pu is Leaving

Today is my last Beijing for a while. I am not sure how long it will be, but I would really like to come back at some point. Maybe to live, maybe to work or maybe just to travel. Whatever the reason is does not matter much to me. I would just like this time in Beijing to be my last time here.

This evening I had a blast hanging out with my classmates, friends and teachers. I was really touched that they all decided to come and see me one last time. We ate a lot of food, chatted it up, made some jokes, said goodbyes and then we left the restaurant. Afterwards MCK, Taylor, Kitty, Aaron, 婷婷 and I went to McDonalds since 婷婷 had not eaten dinner yet.

I made it home around 11:30. I decided to try and hang out with Kitty some more, but by the time I cabbed it over to BCLU I realized she was not in the dorm. I am not sure where she went to stay, but she never answered my text messages, so I went back home. I think I was just trying to find a way to avoiding packing. The process of packing puts closure on my trip and it is closure that I don't want just quite yet.

Tonight I have been slowly packing and organizing myself. I had to get all the info off my cell phone since I won't be taking it home. My classmate wanted it, so I told her she could use it and once she is done she can just send it back to me through the mail. I also needed to write some text messages to tell people to change the numbers of the cell phone since it will no longer be my number, but her's. Besides this I have pretty much packed everything up except for what I need tomorrow. The process of packing was pretty somber. It had to be done eventually and I knew it all along, but that did not make it any easier. I wish going home was as easy as coming here.

Something that did make the evening nice was reading some of my friend's blogs. Alissa recently went on a trip to Xi'an and she explains many of the nuances to traveling in China very well. I could not count all the times her story made me think about my own experiences. I recommend who wants to know about the often ignored aspects of traveling in China should read this passage.

The second blog that made me happy was the one written by 婷婷. It is not much and it is in Chinese, but it provides a brief description of me. It was interesting to see how she described me. It is nothing outrageous or scandalous, but it was simple and correct. I paid homage to her by entitling this entry with one similar to hers. If you want to read some Chinese once and for all, read 小普要走了。。。

I am going to catch my flight in about 10 hours from now. Before then I have to write some postcards, burn comes cds, have coffee with my friend Wendy and eat lunch with the usual lunchtime crowd and my landlord. I think that is enough to distract me from thinking about leaving too much. On the other hand I am really excited to see everyone back at home, especially Eric and Sandra. Interestingly enough, this was the longest time I was apart from my brother. It was not too bad actually. It might have been because I have been over here in China doing what I have wanted to do for a while and having fun. I am not too sure how he felt about it. I am sure he handled it fine and thought the time flew by.

Well I think this entry is just about done. I think it is late enough to brush my teeth now without disturbing my landlord, so I am going to go do that and the survey my situation a couple more times and then call my friend for coffee.

I also here it is snowing in Seattle, so I am excited that I get to arrive in time for the snow.

The Inevitable is Coming

So my time in China is winding down. I have less than two days before I leave. I only really have about 48 hours until I leave Beijing. I have been trying to avoid thinking about it, but whenever I have spare time I have thought about leaving. I have been busy enough this week to not think about things too much, but it is getting harder.

I know that Friday night I won't be able to hang out with MCK, Taylor or any of my other friends. I know that I won't be able to go eat dumplings on the weekend at the local cafteria. I won't be able to see my friends Kitty, Wenday and Sunny. I can't just pick up my cell phone, give them a call and hang out. I won't be able to have any more snowball fights with classmates here. Even though I am not the biggest fan of fixing computers (or trying to), I won't be able to try and help my classmates do this anymore. I won't be able to enjoy the smiles I see when I chat with my teachers. I won't be able to ride my skateboard to class in the morning. I won't be able to see everyone ice skating on the frozen pond. I won't be able to eat dinner with my 73 year old landlord.

There are too many things I won't be able to do, so I guess I should focus on what I can do when I get back to Seattle.

Tonight was a fun night. I went out to dinner with a few of my classmates, specifically Tammy, Janny, Cassie, Carolyn and Sonia. We walked to a nearby restaurant and ate some great food thanks to Tammy and Janny. We chatted about all sorts of things, especially my trip to Yunnan. A few of them plan to go, so they wanted me to share my experiences with them. After dinner they gave me a little present. It was a little skateboard keychain. I was really appreciative that they gave it to me. It means that they were somewhere and saw this little keychain with a skateboard on it and mut have said to themselves, 'oh wow, Jon would really like this'. That in itself makes it even better.

After we ate dinner we all walked back to their apartments. I checked Janny and Tammy's new apartment, had a beer and chatted it up. After a few minutes I had to leave to meet Sunny. She wanted to see my pictures of Yunnan because she has been there before. I thought we would be able to check them out online, but that wasn't working out to well, so we decided to go look at the photos she took while she travelled around Yunnan and other parts of China.

After we looked through all the pictures and she scolded me for not visiting some places in Beijing she showed me where to catch a cab. I slowly walked across campus on the slippery ground to where I could catch a cab and then left. That pretty much brings me up to this point. Right now I am just uploading the more than four hundred photos I took while traveling in Yunnan. I hope you guys enjoy looking at them. I took them for you guys.

Wario Cart!

This morning we arrived in Lijiang pretty early in the morning. We didn't have a lot of time to dilly dally because Fredo was flying back to Beijing in the early evening and we needed to visit the Stone Forest before he left. As soon as we got to Lijiang was found the bus station and started to figure out how we were going to get there. Because we arrived so early the station was not yet open. We waited around outside, so, of course, other people offering the 'same' service started offering us prices to take us to the Stone Forest. We started talking to them, but knew we were going to wait until the station opened to see what the prices they offered were.

During the process of waiting and talking to everyone we were guaranteed that no one would be able to give us better prices. They were basically saying whatever they could to get us to go. One guy even started laughing at us while he was talking to his friend about us. I am glad he really didn't know that we knew he was trying to rip us off because they confirmed our choice of not going with him.

We got another price from one young guy which were pretty cheap and the driver would wait around at the Stone Forest for us and take us back to Lijiang. This was ideal because the price was cheap and included the 'road fees' and everything. Little did we know we were going to be taken by Wario!

The beginning of the car ride was nice. Wario was sort of talkative. He was a little loud, but it was funny. He also tried to get us to pay the fees for the highway, but over the radio we were told that the highway was closed, so we knew that everyone was trying to rip us off again. Wario knew that we knew, so he joked about it. After about an hour or so Wario lit up a cigarette inside the car. We all protested, but to no avail. He lit up a cigarette and happily smoked it. This made us all uncomfortable and sort of pissed us off. The kicker was that Wario decided to stop for breakfast ten minutes later. Besides the fact that he did not tell us and we were not paying to sit by the road while he ate, was that he could have waited a measly ten minutes before smoking his damn cigarette!

When we made it to the Stone Forest we were disappointed with Wario, so we knew that we were not going to pay any more money than what we agreed to in the morning.

The Stone Forest was pretty uneventful. It is a pretty nice place, but I would recommend going during the spring or summer. During the winter I think it is too cold to make it worthwhile. After walking around and seeing some big rocks MCK tripped over a large ill-placed rock in the trail and fell over. It was the most hilarious part of the morning because it was one of those falls where he made a lot of noice because he was carrying a lot of stuff. As he was falling over this rock he was trying to catch himself, but it was not working. After what sounded like ten seconds of falling (think of Homer falling down the Springfield gorge after trying to jump it on a skateboard) the incident with the crash of a broken bottle. On top of hurting his knees MCK broke his bottle of Sprite that he was taking home to add to his collection of Chinese soda bottles.

After walking around the Stone Forest for about an hour we had pretty much seen all there was to see. We ended up running into some friends we met in Dali (see picture below), so we kicked it with them for a little while and then had lunch and bought a few little trinkets.

The ride back was peaceful because there was no smoking and Wario did not want to listen to any music. We were all exhausted, so everyone except for me took naps. I started zoning out, but once we started driving down a bumpy road I was shaken back to reality. For one, the road was really bumpy and, two, I did not remember driving down this road on the way to the Stone Forest. After a quick left turn we were driving up a steep hill to a big Bhuddist temple. Wario said he was doing business and getting money from the temple. I mean who does this kind of business and what kind of business is that? Maybe he was covering up for his daily practice of praying. Whatever, either way he was happy. So happy that he sped out that place like a bat out of hell. I thought we were going to hit someone crossing the road, but we made it out safe.

The rest of the trip was calm until we reached the city. We paid the first half of the 200 dollars before we left in the morning and had to pay the second half on the way back. We were all tired and grumpy when we were getting out of the van. Then Wario tried to make us pay more money, so Fredo gave him a piece of his mind and told him to go talk to his partner because he wasn't getting shit from us and slammed the door in his face. He was not so happy about that, so we quickly went back to the bus station to grab our bags. After that we hopped into the nearest cab and went the other direction.

Why Traveling in China is so Great

Right now I am on a train from Dali to Kunming and I can't get back to sleep. We stopped at a station a while ago, but I have not been able to get back to sleep since then. I started thinking about everything we have done for the past couple days because I want to remember it. I want to write it down before Iforget. The biggest thing that has stood out has been all the people we have met along then way.

I think some of my best memories from this trip will simply be the ones where my friends and I talked to people. It all started at Tiger Leaping Gorge. We reached the halfway point of the hike pretty early on day, but decided relax that evening and stay at the halfway house. I am super glad we did because we met with people from all over Europe. We all ate dinner together and chatted in front of the gorge. The scenery was amazing and the mood was great.

Even more fun than chatting with people from France, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Israel was chatting with the owner and employees of the hotel right before bed. As we were heading towards bed we noticed the hot coals the employees were sitting around and decided to hang out and chat with them for a while after they invited us to sit down.

One of the people that was chatting with the employees and us in the evening was also eating breakfast in the same place the next morning, so when we wanted to take a picture with everyone we of course asked him. Later in the day we saw him again and decided to take a cab to the closest city where we would hop in another car back to Lijiang. After some great haggling done by the man's lady friend the six of us then hopped in another car and drove down to Lijiang. On the way back home we decided to eat dinner together in the Old Town in Lijiang. We spent about three or four hours just chatting by the side of a small canal in Old Town.

After checking Old Town in Dali this afternoon we were riding the bus to train station when Aaron struck up a conversation with the young girl next to him. We talked about the classes she is taking. It was great to hear that she would rather go to school than not go to school. That comment made me smile inside. She also ended up telling us the history of some of the pagodas that we saw during the afternoon, so it was a very fruitful conversation. Aaron and I told her that we could be her teacher since she was our history teacher. She wanted us to teach her English, so we agreed to be pen pals, but not in so many words.

Right now I am sleeping across from a twenty five year old woman from Xi'an. She originally studied computer science in school, but now her work is not related to computers. She decided she would rather interact with people than computers, so she changed her industry. She also has a few companions on the trip that we talked to for a while as well. They showed a lot of interest in the little red books of Mao Zei Dong's essays that we picked up today. It was fascinating to hear them talk about their experiences with the books. Some of them were older, so they mentioned how they would spend all their time outside of class studying these books, but the young lady does not know much about the books. It was apparent in her comments and the ones of her older friends. It was a great expression of the changing mindset of Chinese people.

As I was thinking about all these experiences I could not help but be reminded of a TV show my dad used to watch. I cannot recall the name, but it was a show hosted by a English or Australian man who would ride trains around the world and document his journies and turn them into documentaries shown every week or so. I did not really understand what was so compelling about a journey like this, but now I can understand. You might meet a person one day and say 'hello' to them. You might see them that evening or the next day or maybe never again, but it is great for the short amount of time you are together to share your experiences. It doesn't matter where you are from, what you like to do or how old you are, when you meet someone traveling you have a chance to learn something new and make a new friend. Hopefully it will end up being an experience that neither party forgets and if so, it is not a big deal because you enjoyed the time you were together.

I am not really sure where this thought started, where it ended up or where it was supposed to go, but essentially I am thrilled to have this last experience traveling because it gives me so many chances to meet new people and connect with a culture that is not my own and gain experiences that not a lot of other people get the chance to experience.