First impressions

It's great not having to be on a VPN to post on blogger.  Although I guess that's mostly psychological since I spend most of my time online in Beijing just automatically logged onto the VPN.

A couple random occurrences since we arrived:
5.9 richter scale earthquake within hours of arrival.  Oh California.
Opened my suitcase to find a never-before-seen Chinese knife inside.  Hrmmmm.....???

Both of those really aggravated the sense of sur-reality that we were experiencing.

In keeping with a California tradition, we got In'n'Out burgers on the way back from the airport.  M's mom wanted to stop at Trader Joe's too, and we ran around the store wide-eyed.  I laughed maniacally at the guacamole prices and bought some.  Looking forward to that creamy goodness.

Here we come!

Happy Fourth of July.  We celebrated with a delightful lunch at NOLA Cafe, which serves up some mighty fine New Orleans style food.  I'm not really sure why, but I've always had a thing for southern cookin'.  Then we headed over to the Silk Market to do some last minute shopping, because what's more American than being a consumer? :P  i've mentioned it before, but it's actually quite fun celebrating the Fourth abroad, even if it does make us a bit homesick.

But that's not a problem right now.  Because we're all packed up and ready to go for our first trip back to the US since we got here.  It's still all pretty surreal, but we can't wait to see all of you.  Unless you're a random reader that we don't know, then we'll just have to keep it impersonal.