17 days to go

Ni hao!
First post, and seventeen days until I leave for China. On June 28, I fly out of my town, Boise, Idaho, to San Francisco. There I join a flight that includes University Study Abroad Consortium (USAC, based in Reno) students headed to China. We fly overnight to Beijing where we get a four day tour of that historic city. From there we fly into Chengdu, in southwestern China, for a five week summer school course. I will be taking Chinese I, Sichuan Cooking, and Chinese Calligraphy and teaching a course in journal travel writing to USAC students. I am incredibly excited. I was all ready to go two years ago for Fall term 2007 when family health issues forced me to withdraw. Now things have improved, and at last I will be in China and actually experience it for myself. I have read books and articles, taken some basic Mandarin, and now I am reviewing my Pimsleur CDs and reading Lonely Planet, China (LP).

Fun fact about China: Tea was once used as currency in China (LP 100).