Back in China

I have actually been back in China for about three weeks. Additionally, the last few posts and next few post are pretty old, but I was way too busy this summer gigging frogs and drinking with my buddy at Red Robin to do much posting. Now that I am back in China, I have the free time to catch up on posting. My trip home was an absolute blast, it was great to see friends and family, eat Mexican food, and watch the Colbert Report on hulu.com. At the most basic level, living or traveling abroad should both make the traveler note things which are lacking or done poorly in his country and realize some of the good things about his home country. I think that being gone for 11 months, I had become pretty accustomed to life in China, and had forgotten some of the great things about America. It was great to have family and friends remind me of many of the reasons that I am so fortunate to have grown up in the States.

Despite my attempts, I only have a vague idea of who reads this blog. So, hopefully whoever you are, you find something useful, and feel free to comment if you have questions or anything. For interested family and friends, remember you can click the "My photos-Picasa photo gallery" to check out all the pictures I have taken. I haven't added captions yet, but the album titles and maps should give a general idea. If you ever want to holler at me, you just need to download Skype and call me, it goes straight to my cell phone. Email and Facebook also work just fine (well I have to shift around the firewall, but that's no problem). Danthemanstan and I are returning to teach another year here. We are joined by Sarah and Sean, a couple from Holland, Michigan; Peter, from North Carolina-who taught in Zhejiang province last spring, and Jordan, from Reno, Nevada/California. There are also five or six German teachers, and two Japanese teachers. Add us to the 15,000 Chinese students and staff and you have Jiangsu Teacher's University of Technology.