Bacck home

so lets finish this up?
so i am home safely. it was a three day trek back home

first a train to shenzhen. that was 18 hours and a horrible ride. then i had to go to hong kong. that was a long walk. walking through customs. out of china into hong kong. that was a lot of walking. very very long corridors. i must admit it was interesting to see the border. on the hong kong side was a high fence with cameras and water and guards. the chinese side... well there was a small railing...

so then it was a long bus to the airport. once there i thought hey i have all day lets go explore hong kong. wow that was too expensive. and the fog was so bad i couldn't see much farther than a hundred meters or so.

so i stayed in the airport. airport food is expensive. i spend a lot of money at the airport. i had 18 hours mroe to wait in the hong kong airport. then a few hours on a plane to tokyo. there i went through more customs... then it was another hour or two wait.

then a long 9 hour flight to LA. that was a terrible flight. the airplane AA didnt have electric plugs, only cigarrette ligthers type. wtf? who carries an adaptor for that? all other international flights i have taken have a real 3 prong or internatinal plug... and AA wants 125 for an adaptor. pfft. not to mention that the video player for the plane was very low quality. i swear i was on a chinese hard seat. the videos didnt start when you wanted, you coud join in or wait for the next playing to start... why dose it work that way? i have no idea. it must just be that old or that poorly designed. yay american engineers.

so now im in LA. customs AGAIN!!! then security. then LA lines. then im in the airport where again i need to eat. expensive again and as you can imagine airport food is of low quality.
then its a long 3 hours to austin.

whoo im home. sweet!

QQ

It took months and on the verge of leaving china i think i figured out how to get QQ!
859243948
My QQ #

Who is Free Sunday night

I don't think many will see this but please if you are free sunday night please let me know. I want to go out to eat with my friends! So if you read this email me!!

Back in wuhan

Hello hello!
i am back in wuhan! I hope to see all my wuhanese friends again! I will try to call all of you tonnight. or at leaast to the betst of my abilities. I want to see all of you before i leave! Mabye we all can go out to eat this weekend mabye? Please email me to let me know when you are available. I am thinking saturday or sunday evening? or mabye another day is better.

I will load photos when i et the chance. i have 12 gb of photos to work through.

So much fun!

i love DIY

so i found these guides to build the minority report computer input. use your hands to control a computer. so i wanna use a glove and build the ultimate home remote!!

ha ha this si so cool chek this out

http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

Beijing

So what have i done here in beijing?

First day, Arrived to early

next day meet mom and aunt gayle

So since then Went on the great wall. 5 hour hike. that was great fun. and i didnt give a whip about them rushing us sayin we were taking too long.

we went shopping and a bit overwhelmed. woo

had some great tea. and we definantly are going to buy more. the teas here are amazing. buy a
couple kg's of diff teas. it can get expensive. some are up to 40$ for half a kilo.

yesterday meet up with chenwei. that was fun. the meeting spot was closed off. why they close tiananmen square i have no idea. but we still meet up with her, it was just a little difficult. we went out to hotpot. that was great. a bit spicey but it was good. Chenwei though aunt gayle was better at chopsticks than mom!! oh and she learned the phrase, full as a tick.





today we went to the summer palace. bought some trinkets. then we went for duck. Wow it was pricy but itwas really worth it. it made it all the difference. the quality was awsome. they carved the bird at the table. fried eggplant.

mom now is downstairs wanting to get liqure'd up... ha ha

The Big Let Down

So i found out that i didnt get hte RA Job. The job that pays for half my college, making it affordable. After waiting and waiting I emailed and asked what waas going on, why have I heard nothing and then I get a response that i didn't get hte job. Wow thats great. So now i have to hope someone quites and i can somehow weasle my way into thier slot.

without the RA job I really don't know how i will afford college. College just doubled in price for me. Wow and then I have to deal with a room mate??? well thats only a huge disapointment.

well i guess its time to look into friends and hte appt? this is not fun. i really needed that job. i hate that they choose a newbie over me. for the only reason i can see is that it is inconvient to talk to me. But it could be i am just undesirable to hire. I may be a little bias.

PHOTOS

Iam not taking time to like sort them, edit them or to really figure out which ones are good. this is just a small sample. i loaded aonthoer 70 or so to the albumbs. look for the bad \folder naming. i need to head out to the airport to mee mom so i have other things to deal with. but hey some photos. i tell you i had areal scare. i thought i lost 700 photos. didnt. just a folder naming problem. woo boy i was really really freaked out there. no i still have the 1300 photos. so ok. some are on the net.

ok so quick what happened to me?
well i took the 26 hour train ride. the cheap mp3 player i bought (10$) works fine. its a little sckety. the problem was the computer i was using was corrupt and donwloaded like 10% of some of the audio books. so like the book would just stop mid sentence. nothing worse than that when your in the iddle of exciting scene. so yea. 26 hours.

huge audio overload. idk how its done. you ahve the PA system giving anouncements, baby crying, a conductor selling pure crap, a moview showing, and a few people blaring thier music fomr their cell phones. yea no idea how that all works. or why people start drinking beer at 8am. i mean i know its a long train ride but seriously? 8am is EARLY to drink any beer.

so i got in last night. only it turns out mom didnt come yesterday. she comes today. so woo my not understanding the time difference. so its like midnight and i have to make my way to the ote other end of the city. bak to beijing backpackers hostel.

i get in a t like 130 am. wake up at 830. so i have breakfast and i loaded some photos. download some books. and woopiee!!

ok off to the airport!!

lets try blogging again

so lets blog!
ill try this again. i dont have anywhere to go for 5 hours. i should be able to report well.
So im in guiln soo nto head to beijing.

but from where i left off.
where did i leave off? im not going to check. i am going to assume i wrote about the horse trip.

so i come down to guilin. I didnt bring the card with the address or directions. i htought it was in my wallet but it was not. go me! its 10pm im tired and i have no idea where the hostel is. so i figure lets walk till i find an internet bar, info kiosk somewhere where i can check Hostelworld.com. about an hour later i find a place. the entier time this chinese guy is following me telling me lets stay at this hotel, "i will pay" he says. yea dogey as you can get. really started to creep me out. i find this information kiosk and they check. Really nice lady. Turns out the hostel is 120m across the street from the train station. less than a min walk. ha ha. so lets hike back to the station and voila there it is.

check in is quick and painless. the next day i spent the afternoon walking around the city. elephant trunk hill. "the senic" spot. I also check out reed flute cave. Amazing cave, never saw any reeds or flutes. the cave is a bit odd. the chinese way of sprucing up nature. the cave is enormous with some amzing geological structures. but here its lit up with colored lights. so its purple, blue, red, green geological structures. its kinda neat i must admit. but at the same time its a bit disney land. in the middle there is even a light show complete with bubble machines, laser lights etc. its just kina like "is this needed?"

then i took the bus that night down to yangshou. Definantly THE place to be. Found that hostel easy enough. It is damp, moldy and one grouchy staff member. but it is cheap and well located... win some you lose some.

sadly my first day was not great. went out took a bike and started cycling. was good fun but in the middle of nowhere i broke hte bike. i guess it hit a rock or what but the rear gear shifter was destroyed. took 5 hours to get the thing replaced. I had to replace it becaus otherwise i would lose my huge deposite. had to talk the bike back then find a store that would replace it cheap. they all wanted me to buy this high end gear shifter... its just a rental. just make it work enough.

the next day was so much better once i got back to the hostel.

meet some awsome people down there. spent one day with ryan from chicago cycling like madmen through the mud and dirt. took a bamboo boat ride down the river. then hit a great dumpling place for some dumplings and tea. next day went out with a group of 9 to the other end of hte country side at the lead of 3 israeli girls. I can't pronounce thier names so i will not even try to spell them. 3 israeli girls, us 2 american guys, 2 from the UK and one from singapore and you cant forget the two aussies. amazing time. great great fun. \

we all went back to the same restaurant for beer duck, beer fish, potatoes, eggplant, dumplings, veggies and popcorn. it was an awsome meal. stayed up till 3 am talking and laughing. sadly we got kicked off to bed by the grumpy staff member. i get she was tryin to sleep but its the lobby and we payed to stay there. if we want to talk and laugh till 3am thats what we pay for.

the next day went off with another group of people and cycled around. found a random hill and climbed it. just because we could. that night we went and ate some crawfish and duck. the duck is amazing down here. but of course duck always is

odd things...
well i saw a dude on a motorbike rounding up dogs for the market. they are everywhere out here. just hundreds of dogs.

damion found hte mountain cows. cows that live in the mountains, bounding around the rocks like goats. Its a mountain cow!!

so i came back from yangshou have to meet mother tommorow in beijing. i ended up getting my train ticket HALF OFF! always go to the train station to buy the ticket. show the student id card and wam 50% off. sweet! he also found me a cheaper ride. so it went from 400 koai down to 120! awsome!!

later that day i went with tina, a german girl who studies psychology, great girl very interesting. we spent hte entire day walking around the city talking. then all evening walking around the markets buying street food. that is fun stuff. i will miss street food. not even kknowing what i am ordering.
saldy i think i cought a bit of a cold. im sneezing and a bit stuffy. but im better today than i was yesterday.
that is what im doing now. just killing time till the train

Down to warmer weather... err... not exactly.

so first report on chengdu.
sorry still cant find a place to upload pictuess. i have 1300 photos. none to share yet. sorry my friends.

so i spent 3 days in the mountains. it was awsome. cold. but awsome. i didnt know it was going to be so cold. so the first thing i did when i got there was to go find a warm set of clothes. it ended with finding a place to buy tibetian clothes. i bought a tibetian robe. so freakin warm. its so cool. its like a giant fur lined bath robe.

i had a lot of fun . i have to run ill update later

Panda Power

So i went to the panda research station. it was amazing. well worth the trip. i dare say the 18 hour train rdie was worth it for just this morning. the pandas were so cute. like big fluffy dolls. i get a few houndred photos. but as i forgot to repack my usb cable i cant post. mabye tonight someone will have one. but the big highlight was the red pandas. i have my picture holding a little red panda. yea thats right. i got to hold a panda!!! it was soooo cute and soft. i got to feed it apples.
and i resisted the temptation to buy a panda hat. as cute and ridiculous as it is it would go the way of my london hat. a decoration on a shelf. i'd rather print out some of these panda photos for the same price.

so this afternoon i booked my train ticket back south (25 freakin hour train ride) but i got a real novel now. no more old english classics. some thriller book about an assasign. im just lucky they have a book exchange. they had a few tom clancy's but i read em. although i was tempted to pick up rainbow 6 again.

the afternoon i spent wandering the city. just killing time going no where. i discovered a new food but i already forget what it is called. it basically was a pancake that could be folded over in a taco and filled with anythrim from peppers to sugar. it was really good. i also tried bamboo. and well its panda food, its sweet and juicy but its just fibers. i mean yea it fills you up quick but doesnt digestwell. ehh.

so im going to go again see if i can find a notebook. i guess ill read and write on the train. writing is a fun way to kill a few hours.

oh i also learned bank of china has a nice policy. they charge 10 koai every time you withdraw money in a province outside of where you opened the account. using the atm to withdraw 100 koai its a 10 koai fee. withdraw 1000 its a 10 koai fee... i wish i knew that. i've been getting charged and not know it. i would not have been taking money out in 100 or 200 increments. i mean its ridiculous. least i think so. its one country, one bank... why start this ridiculous charges?

anyway. ok so that is that and uh hope i come home!

Chengdu

So i was a little disapointed when i first arrived. a little bummed i was alone. i dont like being alone. i get lonely. the trainride was long. only 18 hours. (the next one i plan to takeis 25 hours by train) but with no music player and robinson crusoe (i waas about to pick up little women but sadly the book to me seemd like a time warm of sex in the city)\

so i arrived in chengdu to find a FREAKIN　Awsome hostel. this place is gorgous. so i spent theday waanterin the city and foudn a monestary. i figured no big deal another temple amoung many. this is not like the temples in beijing. this was a working monestary and it was HUGE. the buildings ar all well kept up, and just plain pretty. but what was truely awsome was the garden. half this place was gardens. and if its one thing the chinese can do its a garden. i spend almost houror 2 just walkin through it. it was amazing. they even had a tea house. i didnt stop i wasnt in the mood for tea.

spent the afternoon wandering the nearby market streets lookin at the trinkets. its fun to window shop at the useless stuff.

came back to the hostel to look for company. i was hungry. last i ate was yesterday around 230, it was then about 6pm i was hungry. sadly no one wanted to eat. they all claimed to have eaten. so i wandered off to this little noodle shop it was sugested in the map. it was nothing special. but it was near a park and that was fun to wander around the park at night. it also had a night market with all sorts of odd wares. my favorite was a stall with small chu ku nus to test fire. you who don't know yourmilitary history willl know that the weapon is a repeating crossbow. the first weapon to have rapid fire capability.

came back to the hostel and booked the panda tour. it was only 20-30 koai more to do it thorugh the hostel and i did not want to spend an hour or two figurin out what bus to get and toget up early enough to find it anddeal with all of it.

but what i discovered was a neat treak they offer. a 3 day horse trek for 900 koai. 3 days on horse back through some amazingly beautiful sichuan countryside. its a real time warp. in villaes where all the tents are made of homespun cloth and small villages. its really cool. im havig them look into if any tours are available. i mean come on. horses, countryside, awsomenesss. yeahaw!

so yea tommorow i plan to see the pandas and spend hte rest of the day in the aprks. im thinking im not goin to go to leshan to see the gian buddah. im sorry but its just too expensive. like 30o or somethin like that with the transportations,2 entrance fee's... i''d rather just do the out of the ordinary horse trek. i guess i can't see evrything. i think i also have to skip the bamboo forest. its way out of the way and the only way tosee it is to do a mini tour throuh the area. if i did that i wouldnt have time to see guilin

i have to make a choice, spend more time here or cut the loss and try to see a bit of everything.
i also have to worryabout this RA interview comming up. i can't miss that.

oh almost forgot. i posted pictures of the new year on the picture website. i didnt have time to embed them to the blog. but click on the picture album link on the left. you shoudl see it. should be the newest albumbs, i htink tis called louis home village, or chinese new year...somethin like that.

how much can go wrong in a day?

so this morning i get up early, ready to start the adventure. See China! yea! bag is packed, dress, ready to go. i grab my mp3 player and everything stops. my mp3 player is broken. spend 3 hours to learn that my white screen of death is apparently a common problem with my model of mp3 player due to a manufacturing defect on the part of creative. however creative has and will do nothing about it. It took that long because my mp3 player software is only available on windows im on ubuntu because xp wouldn't install on my computer. YEa go figure. 2 xp disc and still windows wont install. hp wont send disc because they don't ship to china... but back to the creative problem. they say restart it, dispite it being a hardware conflict with the firmware... they suggested buy a new one. its not a year old. Bullcrap. So its only a 12 hour train ride right? I guess all those books on tape arn't needed. ill go pick up a magazine...

i go to the ticket office. they dont have tickets to chengdu. and to go to kunmin would cost 30% of my budget. so screwed... i catch a break and serge finds me. Lucky because the other day my phone was lost so i have no way to call any friends or them to talk to me. He shows me another (and cheaper) place. so i go to chengdu. its not part of the plan. but hey not like i have much a choice. its the only place the trains run to.

but the trains dont run fri or sat. so im here for another 48 hours or so. so i go to the store to look for a book or some magazines. national geographic or whatever. apaprently the english section is limited to only the classics. HuckleberryFinn, little women, 20,000 leagues under the sea etc etc. so i read like 80% of em. so i try looking at the boos i haven't read, little women. i get one or two chapters and all i read was an old school Sex in the City... Hey its what i saw and im not about to read the outdated gilmore girls book. I know its sad but hunchback of notre dame, three musketeers, while were good movies i dont know if i could read it. i mean i saw the movie. and translated books i don't tend to like. well call me cheap but ehh, i'd rather have a short book and change in the hostels.

so i grab that crusoe book. i don't remember if i read it or not. but its short its sweet and im rather sure i have never read it before. so here i am back in my dorm. i have traveled no where but my mp3 player broke and yea.. woo hoo. nothin more can go wrong right? well there is lots of time...

Love it. I just love it.

Thinkin Away

So i was thinkin, i wanna try to brew my own beer. I thick it would be fun to try to make my own beer. Do you think it would be allowed in the dorms? Yea that might not fly well. Well i have more of a chance in setting up a brewery in my dorm than in mothers. This is the part i dont like. have to wait till i find a new place.

wohoo!

so im just abut to head out when i look at the weather report. it has been beautiful this week. i plan to leave tommorow. Guess what I see. A giant cloud over china. ONLY over the part i want to visit. The forcast predicts Rain and clouds for apparently the next week.

So this does not seem the time to visit the most beautiful parts of china, when its raining and cloudy. ok so where to go? Xiamen? hit the beach? Is it better to wait here 3 days and hope it clears up or get some greyish countryside?

so i am wrapping up my plans. turns out i think i lost my phone. FREAKIN A. last night i had it when i was at erwins saying goodbye. this morning I can't find the phone. I have my roomate call my phone and wow, my phone is OFF. so now i cant find it. I just redid my room its not here. i have no idea how to do it.

now lets see how freakin cheap of a phone i can get. I need to go shopping with scarlet and now i have to figure out how to organize that... so scarelet if you see this email me. ahh i love it. its always something that is going wrong isnt it?

i cant believe how do i loose a phone in 4 hours? i walked home, went to bed woke up and its gone... omg.

well yea so lets get crackin!

The plan

So I guess this is the plan.
Travel china. Hope i don't run out of money. Hope i dont fall of the cliff, get mauled by elephants or mugged. so you can see the route. obviously it might change. i hope to leave by this thursday or so. So awsomeness. My only real worry is i run out of money.



View Larger Map

Almost done

So tomorrow I return to Wuhan. Today is a few things. First I must go buy a buss ticket, yea I'm paying 200 koai for a buss ticket. Oddly it is supposed to be faster and more comfortable than a train and still more expensive. Almost 2x the ticket price than a train ticket. Next I must go to the bank to buy this ticket. I also want to get another shower and stop at a computer store to check out what it would take to get a hard drive put into this piece of crap computer. At worst the computer breaks but I can use the parts and re-use the hard drive. Hopefully if it is not too expensive ill pick one up. It would be nice to have some space.

I was a little surprised on the reaction I got yesterday when I left the small village. I didn’t think I made much an impression. I thought the family didn’t care for me much, but nainai (grandma) said she didn’t want me to leave and it seemed that most of the family agreed. I didn’t think anyone rightly liked me. It was fun being there. It was quite an experience living in a village.
I had a fun experience talking with two girls in the village. Talking about boys and girls, dating, marriage and children. It was fun while they asked me about what I plan to do and my American customs. They were surprised that in America boys and girls both share the duties of cooking and cleaning. That women in America have power in that when they ask boys to do things they do it. Boys who ignore their women find themselves without girls. It was neat when the girls said they don’t like the system, or the smoking. But as this is really a side note that there is no choice. Apparently finding boys who don’t smoke, willing and happy to help and share the work. I am not surprised at all about the stories of Americans who come here to find a wife.
But that is all aside. What I must point out is that despite my confirmation that I have a girl back in America if I would like a Chinese girlfriend. That well, what wont she doesn’t know won’t hurt. She is in America she will never know. Pfft. I can barely handle dating one girl, I would fall apart if I tried two. I am too damn honest and would splurt something out yea… two girls is just asking for trouble.
So I guess it is time to go and hey! Soon to post all this to the net! This will be great!

More Chinese Village

Wow. I just went through and redid my color and gamma settings on my laptop with custom settings. Using windows guide to properly set up my screen. Good lord it’s like a new computer. The before and after is huge and I just can’t believe that before I thought the colors were correct. And that was just gamma. I don’t know how to properly customize and optimize the color scheme. I now understand why on photographer websites you can buy machines that optimize the color perfectly. This is like night and day. I am so glad I always save the original file of my photos; it looks like I will have to go through and re-edit almost everything. I almost want to wait till I can return to the USA where I can buy a big cheap clunker of a screen as I have read those are the easiest and best for photography work. They are “more accurate” when it comes to colors etc, also being easier to calibrate. I defiantly will buy a big heavy screen when I get home. Now they should be dirt dirt cheap.
This computer I think has almost had it. Turning it on or off is a real ritual now. Turning on is worse. I often have to wait a long time as the computer fans, processors turn on, I know they are on as I can hear them but the computer does not boot up. I have found that taking the battery out then putting it back in sometimes helps. Sometimes I just must wait as the computer attempts to boot up which can take up to twelve times. I think there are problems with the electricity. I would not be surprised if soon it completely short circuits and I lose this thing altogether. I need to get this back to Wuhan and back it up. I was thinking of buying a larger hard drive for it and just dealing with the slowness but if this thing is kaput I might just try to use it as long as I can and get a new one when I return to the use. Ill probably try to sell this to someone in the USA for maybe 200$ I doubt ill get much more than that for it. And well try to buy a new laptop. I can only hope I guess. Unless we still have a computer at home? I know then it be a lot cheaper to install some new specialized hardware on a machine like that than it would be to get a laptop with features. I will have to see what is available at home. I do believe however that nothing is rightly available. But who knows craigslist is always full of other people’s crap. Not to mention by the time I get home it will soon be back to school sales at all the electronic stores. I should be able to find something.

day 13

So today was New Years Eve. It was not at all like I expected. We got up quite early to clean the house. I believe it is Chinese tradition to clean the house, rid of the old etc etc. So we swept the floors. I have to wonder who taught the children how to sweep. They would fling dirt out the door but instead the dirt would hit the raised edge and just fly sideways into the nooks and corners of the doorway. But different ideas of clean I guess.

That is one thing I am still trying to get used to. The different ideas of what clean is. Its clean to use the floor as a trashcan because it is easily swept, so sunflower seeds can be spit on the floor, crumbs thrown down, cigarettes used or ash be tossed on the ground, its all ok. But to sit on a planter is dirty.

Afterward we made a quick trip to the hospital where I got another rabies vaccination and then we piled into the vehicle to the small village. I don’t know what I was expecting. We arrived and the boys set up the decorations for the home, which was 2 big red lanterns that in itself is not complicated but new wiring has to be made to a light bulb inside. Never are a plug installed and one cord made and stored, instead every year the entire doorway is just re-wired. The rest of the decorations were posters and ribbons to be taped to the wall.
The ladies meanwhile cooked. Once ready we all sat down for dinner. It was about 3 or four and as you can guess the guys (at the big table) started opening bottles of liquor. Dinner was good. The usual array of 5 or so plates of food from 2 or three vegetable dishes to a plate or two of just meats. Again at the end carp was served. Carp is an interesting fish to eat. I don’t know if you have ever tried it, in the use we don’t often eat it.
Afterward I was schooled in Mahjong by his cousins where I not only worried myself about my toes catching frostbite but I also lost about 10 koai… Luis and I retreated to a bed that had blankets and heating pad which what looked like was mint for 1 person. It was the first time I was happy to spoon with a dude as it was the only way to stay onto of the heating pad and under the blankets.
The next morning I slept in while events happened. Why I was not awakened for the “important” events of the morning is beyond me. It was thought I would prefer to sleep. Oh well, such is life eh? Lunch was served as leftovers from the previous day. Leftovers here are very similar to leftovers in my family but I think not the common way to eat leftovers for many people back home. Here after a meal all the leftover food is dumped into one big pot so the next day it can be heated up and eaten again.
The only difference in my family is dad adds a can or two of cream for a “stew”. Well with Chinese food the various dishes are all rather strong flavored. But this time the bitter pickled cucumbers teamed up with the sour sauced lotus roots to overpower the more subtle flavors of the other dishes of vegetables, meat and fish.
Again I played Mahjong as there is little else to do here. I don’t know why but I guess I expected more of a small hamlet of a village in the mountains surrounded by forest, fields or rivers. Here it is almost nothing of the sort. The land is flat and filled with fields yes. But all the fields look dead with grey dirt carved in neat rows. No forest exists except huddles of trees that scatter the road or distance. The village is much like the rest of china I have seen, crowded. I was amazed at how crowded the small village was. Narrow dirt streets lined with trash and piles of bricks, bamboo or what looks like a sort of hay. Dogs are scampering over piles looking for food while old men sit around smoking.
I think however on the game of mahjong I must be getting better for in the evening when I played with the older ladies I didn’t loose horribly. I only lost 1 of my 5 koai. So I almost broke even. For barely playing I think I am doing well. I blame my cursed luck more than my strategy.
The game is a rummy type game, played with tiles instead of cards. And the game is much like Jin rummy except for 4 people. Well in this game you must call “Uno” to signify you only need one tile to win. Well I would get to the brink of winning several times but often loose only to discover the tiles I need are in the possession of someone else… It is amazing how I can get so close to discover I never had a chance. They found it quite funny as 4 times in a row the same lady won showing her pieces were the ones I needed.
Another night passed and now it is the 27th. I leave the day after tomorrow back for Wuhan. There I must get all my money from the bank and get the transcripts for Texas state. It should only be a quick stop as hopefully Erwin and I are going to go down to Guilin where we will rent some mopeds and scooter around the country side taking pictures. He is leaving soon so it is our way of saying good bye and well doing what we love, taking pictures. Hopefully soon this will be posted on the net.