T minus 5 days

So I leave for China in 5 days. I've known this was coming for awhile, but it feels a lot more real now. Today was my last day of work for the summer, and it's a strange feeling knowing that I won't be going back there on Monday and plugging away on drawings like I've been doing all summer. Instead I'll be frantically trying to finish gathering all the things I need, packing, enjoying the last of my time with Steve. I leave Denver at 11:17 am on Wednesday and arrive in Xi'an at 9:25 pm on Thursday. Granted, China is 14 hours ahead of CO, but that's still more than 20 hours of travel. Then again, it's better than the 3 days it took me to get home from London last spring.

I'll back up for those of you not entirely in-the-know:
I'm going to be spending the next year living in Xi'an, China, teaching English to rocket scientists and the like at Northwestern Polytechnical University. This has been made possible in part thanks to the Whitman in China program, so once again I am glad I went to a small liberal arts school with enough money to fund things like alumni fleeing the country. I took a 3-week intensive Chinese course at CSU in June. It was truly intense. We learned a semester's worth of Chinese in a sixth of the time. So I'll be able to get by, but I have a LOT left to learn. Like how to actually pronounce tones and how to remember which ones go with which words. Thankfully I have a pretty firm grasp of English, though no clue how to teach it. It should be a year full of adventures and new experiences.

I'll try to write about those here as much as possible, so keep checking back! You can find all of my contact info in the column on the right, and you can leave comments/questions/jokes/etc. here too. I'd love to hear from people as much as possible; I know I'm going to feel very far away sometimes, so it will be good to know that everyone is still within reach.