The Middle Kingdom...

...and as I leave you, I vow that I will return stronger and more creative than ever before!

Well everyone, I am off to The Middle Kingdom - China to be exact. I will leave for Beijing very early tomorrow morning with my international relations classmates and be be back in Japan on Thursday evening of next week.

I will be participating in a joint conference with other Stanford overseas studies programs (Oxford, Berlin, Beijing, and Washington D.C.) on the theme of China in the 21st century (global security, policy, and economy).

More than the conference, I am really looking forward to the sight-seeing and the chance to go to a new Asian country. Also, I wear a backpack filled with negative stereotypes about China right now, so it will be informative to actually go there and to compare with Japan. I heard that it is supposed to be 95 - 105 degrees the whole time we are there, with additional sandstorms, so I hope my asthma doesn't eat me alive.

I also hope to buy all this summer's blockbuster movies on pirated DVDs and my very own Folex watch and Ducci bag too!

I will not have a computer with me or stable Internet access in the conference center (why this is the case I do not know...it seems to defeat the purpose of a conference center). So, the blog will go on a week long vacation of sorts as I gather up stories and experiences in the PRC.

If for some reason the Communist government decides to hold me as a political prisoner and I never see you all again, please find solace in the fact that in my last moments as a free man, I was eating bowls of noodles that cost the equivalent of twenty-five cents.

Till next time,

B.E.W.