I’m whiling away my last hours here in Stuttgart at Kathleen’s place where she is vigorously vacuuming while i try my best to stay out of the way. I am filled with a sense of excitement as well as some trepidation about leaving as well. All of my bags are packed (again) and i am concerned (again) that there may be some thing i’ve forgotten to bring or paperwork that i will need that has somehow managed to go AWOL on me. There was a whole fiasco related to my Chinese visa which was only resolved as of last week and required me to send my passport to Chicago to get dealt with. But that crisis is over and it is back in hand, waiting for me to board my 10.20pm flight to Dubai.

In Dubai I have a four-plus hour layover before moving on and I am hoping to catch a glimpse or two of Burj Dubai from my plane either going in or out. It is the world’s soon-to-be tallest building and is already well over a thousand feet up now, it may have already eclipsed the Sears Tower in size, I’m not sure. I’ll get into Beijing at 11 at night on the 1st, where I am waiting for another member of the group who arrives at 3.30am…after which we take a cab to our destination and hopefully I can catch up on some sleep by that point. My friend Andrew from high school will arrive later on that day, so I am looking forward to seeing a familiar face as well.

My understanding is that the schedule for the next three weeks will be very busy and crowded. Every day (yes, weekends too) we will be in classes for about 6 hours, learning teaching methods, practicing them, and learning some Mandarin chinese too. There are a couple breaks for trips to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, so as long as I can get internet access, I will be able to post entries and hopefully pictures also. From Beijing, we as a group move south to Shenzhen on the 20th. Until then, its gonna be busy