Testing…testing

And here we go, my first attempt to blog while in, as Lou Dobbs so eloquently put it for me, Communist Red China!

I’m currently sitting in the waiting area of Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, I just checked my email after 24 hours of traveling and I’ve got some downtime before my final flight to Taiyuan in a couple hours.  But it doesn’t end there, I am staying the night in Taiyuan with a friend because the buses and the train to Taigu won’t be running by the time I get there.  So it’ll be another hour or so tomorrow of either a standing room only train or a cramped commuter bus.

If there is one thing that I can say I have definitely improved during my stints in China it has been the ability to withstand what I would once have considered excruciatingly long days of travel; 18 hour flights, 20 hour bus rides, and 16 hour train rides still aren’t what I would consider ideal but they’ll do as long as the prices stay low.  Though I have heard horror stories, previous students in Kunming once took a 54 hour hard-seat train ride to Urumqi or Kashgar, or somewhere up in the “Western Frontier” of Xinjiang, I believe they mentioned blisters…

And my battery is about dead.  This Sunday is the Lantern Festival which commemorates the end of the Spring Festival (which begins on the Chinese Lunar Calendar new Year).  So hopefully I’ll grab some pictures and have a post up about that in the near future.