traveltraveltravel.

I know what you're thinking: "He wrote in December all about how he was going to be more proactive with his blog. He promised writing, and hasn't posted since... He's got a lot of nerve showing his face around here again."

Maybe you're kinder than that. If so, thanks. If not, I KNOW! I am the worst. There are two reasons for my absence. First and most serious, my VPN hasn't been working at all. Without it, I'm trapped behind the Great Firewall, and therefore cannot post. I have been unable. That doesn't mean, however, that I haven't been writing. I have quite the backlog that I need to publish (sound familiar?). At the current moment, I'm mooching a friend's VPN and thought I might have enough time to post something. 

The other, more awesome reason I've not posted in a while is because I've been busy. Busy travelling. I spent the entire month of January and the first half of February enjoying everything Yunnan has to offer (and making a pitstop in Chengdu for IST). I will talk more about all of that at a later date. However in the meantime, I'd like to ask anyone reading to remember how happy I was about my summer travel...

Marathon Saga...

I don't like to be negative. I've tried my hardest to leave my negative feelings off of this blog. I worry that one negative sentiment could erode peoples' views of China and my experience, even if the other 99% of my time is as awesome as a chimpanzee wearing two tuxedoes.

However, there are some things that do frustrate me from time to time. Life in China can be stressful.

Going with the flow.

Editor’s note: Here's a blog I wrote on 17 July that I didn't have a better way to introduce.

My first impressions of Chengdu were mostly an awed terror. Admittedly, part of it was the exhaustion of travelling for thirty hours, but part of it was the overwhelming sensory overload of experiencing the city.