Alive and Kicking

So what have I been doing lately?

After finishing my teaching gig at Nanjing Medical University, I spent a little more than a week traveling to some big cities in Eastern China. These included Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai. I stayed in a youth hostel for one night, and the rest of the time I stayed in people's homes using the website Couchsurfing.com. This was an incredibly positive experience for me.

-Met some awesome people from all over the world. Musicians, intellectuals, world-travelers, country folks, common people, socialists, missionaries, artists, etc.
-Heard some unbelievable stories involving trans-continental hitchhiking, underground churches, the Chinese mafia, etc, etc, etc.
-Spent hours discussing Chinese politics, society and language. This country holds a very complex political and sociological environment.
-Ate some great (and not-so-great) food.
-Improved my Mandarin by wandering through old neighborhoods and talking to the residents.
-My iPod has been invaluable to me. I listen to lots of music, podcasts, and sermons as I travel by foot, bus and subway.

I am currently in Beijing taking care of some administrative details involving my school, which starts July 21st. In a few days, I will go to the deep (and not-so-deep) South to do some hiking, biking and exploring. The SD-card slot on my computer seems to be broken, so I have only been able to upload a few pictures and no videos. I am trying to remedy this somehow.