Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Arrival!

First of all, I don't have any pictures because I HAD a window seat, but it sucked because I was right on the wing.. which was HUGE. So I let the attendant talk me into giving up my seat to some old people so I could take the empty row in the middle of the plane for myself, plus all of my friends were on that side of the plane. So there. No pics. Deal.

Flying from Hawaii to Japan to Beijing was interesting. JAL has some awesome service. We all were starting our trip right with drinks (for me Yuzu and champagne - I'm definitely getting some on the ride home too cause that stuff was good!). We didn't have a full flight
which was nice because a lot of people got to spread out and sleep. I nodded off a little bit, but mostly I was chatting to Val and working on the scarf I started crocheting Sunday night at Sonnetts. The food was pretty good too, but definitely was working some havoc on my GI
tract by the time we landed at Narita (Toyko).
The flight from Toyko to Beijing was not as nice. The seats were MUCH smaller and unconfortable which was not helped by the fact that we were all ready to be finished flying. The man I was sitting next to felt the need to take up more than his alotted space and the 2 men
behind me kept hitting the back of my seat for emphasis during their lively discussion. It was very tempting to turn around and yell, but that seemed pretty useless since they probably wouldn't have understood me anyway and luckily I was trying to be mindful of the very little
sleep I had gotten so I wouldn't cause a seen or do anything I'd regret later.. you know prepare myself that I'm about to spend a month in Asia.
We finally landed, got our luggage, changed some money, got through customs, had a happy reunoin with Shifu, and were on our way to the hotel when Shifu let us know that our hotel for the first 4 nights was a 0 stars hotel. It's definitely not as bad as it could be, but it stinks of
cigarettes and the beds are really hard. Also, there is no heat. Luckily for me, I sleep better in the cold and love my hat and socks.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Off The Grid

I know that isn't exactly the correct title for this post, but I wanted to say it anyway.

I leave for China tomorrow morning! I am about to start consolidating everything into a bag (can only check 1) when I"m done writing. I will probably forget some stuff but hopefully it's not going to be anything important or expensive. This is going to be my first excursion into a non-english speaking country and I'm bot excited and nervous.. mostly about the food and accessibility of
things like internet so I can keep this thing updated with pics and stories (which I'm going to try and do every day) so I don't have a backlog when I get back - especially since I never actually finished the New Zealand stories. =) Good luck to me!



So I just tried poha berries and I must have picked a crappy bag cause they do not taste very good.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Molokai


Dave and I just spent Monday-Friday on Molokai with the people I work for. We were breaking down an experiment on how sediment effects two species of coral's ability to grow and settle (have baby corals start to grow). It was especially interesting to me because we have a smaller scale controlled experiment on this same subject going on out on Coconut right now that I'm constantly working on.
Dave took copious pictures that I have no access to as of yet, so as usual if you want to see all the pretty pics you can look at his blog.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Cassie! Found!

Our friend Cassie has a blog! Who knew? I didn't until I actually checked on my dirty myspace for once and checked on her page. She's got a lot to say!

Thursday, October 11, 2007

For Brittany

So Brittany has demanded an update, and unfortunately, I don't really feel like I have much to report. It's business and life as usual over here. I go to work Monday thru Wednesday and Clinic on Thursday and Friday, sometimes Saturday. I do homework, hang with Dave, and try to have fun the rest of the time.

I am getting ready (in some way) to go to China on the 30th. I need to buy kung fu shoes, figure out what clothes to bring since it's going to be both freezing and tropical (why should it be easy?), we're going to hospital and such so we need to look professional, and we're going to be going out for dinners and such so we have to look nice too. And casual of course... BUT we're supposed to pack light. These things all seem contradictory to me.

I just finished listening to To Kill A Mockingbird, which I hadn't read since 9th grade. It was great. I could remember nothing of the story except Scout Finch so it was a great surprise how wonderful it was. I love spunky, feisty children.