12: long time, no blog...

merry western christmas, happy western new year, happy chinese new year... unka bill has been neglecting his blog: too busy doing stuff to document doing stuff.

december brought lots of company this way: hans and valentina arrived from zurich, then peter and patrick from atlanta just before christmas, which we all spent in hong kong. margery arrived from new york on christmas day (as hans and val departed) and the rest of us rang in the western new year in guangzhou. lots of pics to assemble from these doings...

mid-january was the beginning of my six-week chinese new year holiday from school: the first two weeks i made a whirlwind trip to the states- to untangle money, prepare taxes, check things in new orleans, visit the dentist... could i have lined up any more unpleasant chores? at least i beat the arrival of the deep freeze in new york.

by the first of february, i was really happy to be back in china! the first week i spent in shanghai, helping the rices with renovations to their new in-town flat. i'm really not going to miss the hour-long-and-sometimes-more bus ride to their old place in zhudi-town!

i took the sleeper train to guangzhou on a thursday, inadvertantly catching the leading edge of new year travel frenzy. by monday, gan and i had loaded into his jeep and departed on a mountain villages road trip that eventually covered 3,200 kilometers and four provinces. we detonated the chinese new year in the village of wenwu (about 300 folks) with some in-law relatives of gan's brother.



1: hengshan village



2: hengshan mountain



3: shao shan



4: feng huang



5: southern great wall




6: huang si qiao



7: jiao long dong



8: end of old year



9: start new year



10: xia si village



the curtain came down on the holiday when i met up with the rices again, this time in guangzhou. it was their first visit there (to see if unka bill had been overselling the place) and they brought granny rice along, who was visiting from belfast. we all enjoyed exploring the city, the beautiful spring weather and the fine cantonese cuisine.

that brings me back to school, and the start of a new semester.

i hope the confinement to quarters will help me catch up here!

more soon...