Thank you...

Hey everyone,
So I don't have anything written for my time in Japan yet, and I don't have enough time on the internet to even attempt to do it justice, so I'll update later about Japan, Hawaii, and life inbetween. However, when in Hawaii I recieved a little DVD from Chandler in the mail...

For everyone that helped in making the dvd, thank you. Especially you, Chandler. I can't believe you took so much time to make something like that. You have no idea how much it means to me. It's hard being halfway around the world and having little contact with everyone. In all honesty, I didn't know if I was missed or not because nobody would ever comment on my blog (a few of you did, I know, but mostly I wouldn't get any comments), and I would get so unmotivated to update at all because I didn't even know if people were reading what I would post. Watching the dvd helped me so much. Yes, I did get a little teary-eyed while watching, and I walked around the ship a little taller that day. I know I'm repeating myself, but I can't say it enough: thank you all for being my friend. They say that 10 people will think about you before they fall asleep. For everyone out there, just know that I'll be one of those 10 :-)

China

I'm still in China, staying at the Tsinghua University Guest house, so my time in China is by no means up. However, I felt the need to post this, because today at the Forbidden City a great battle took place. Two mighty warriors clashed. Buildings were destroyed. Lives were shattered. Yet the turmoil continued. It was a mighty battle, but the war rages on, a victor yet to be decided.

Hong Kong

I think this will be my last batch of pictures for now, because these take a long time to upload and Grant still hasn't used the internet yet. Yes, we had one day in Hong Kong and went to Hong Kong Disney. I hadn't had a Disney fix in quite a long time, and it felt like such a relief to finally be back at Disneyland, but it felt eerie at the same time. Main Street looked almost identical to the one in California, except that it was in China. It felt familiar, but strange at the same time. Kind of like it wasn't supposed to be there. Most everything was in Chinese too, which kind of throws you off. It's much smaller than Disneyland in California. It only has three major rides in common: Space Mountain, Astro Blasters, and the Jungle Cruise. It had some others too, like Winnie the Pooh and the Teacups. The Jungle Cruise was probably my favorite, because it was so different from the Disneyland one. There were three separate lines depending on what language you wanted to ride the ride in, and we chose English, obviously. The only problem was that even though the guide is speaking English, that by no means garuntees that you will understand her. Half of the time it felt like she was speaking Chinese, and the other half she was screaming into the microphone because she was scared of the animals. She did try to make some of the staple Jungle Cruise jokes, but she had a hard time executing them in English. It was cute.

Vietnam

Here's some more pictures from Vietnam/Cambodia. The painting is one that I really wanted to get at Angkor Wat, but I didn't have enought money so I had to settle for a smaller one.

Malaysia

Here we've got some pics from my host family and Kuala Lumpur.

India

Here's a little bit of India. In one of the pictures you can see me in front of the Taj Mahal. Quite literally in front of it. The marble monument is the site where Ghandi was cremated.

Mauritius

It’s pretty late at night right now, so I don’t have much time to explain anything, but here are a lot of picture posts that I’ve neglected to put for a while. I’m trying to keep it at about 5 per country, but it’s not working so well. Maybe you can deduce what all these pictures are if you’ve been reading my past posts. But if you’re lazy and you haven’t, then you can use your imagination to come up with an intense, life-threatening scenario that only the most skilled people could get out of, and then relate that to my picture.

P.S. –I’m going to the Great Wall tomorrow.

Yes Laura, that was an April Fool's. I don't really want to join the army.

Right now I'm in the Hong Kong airport on my way to Beijing to stay at Tsinghua University. I was planning on uploading some pictures here, but right now it's not working. It might be working now, because it seems like they're uploading. I don't have any time to explain them though, because we board soon. I guess it worked! I 'll try to upload some more. I'll give a present to whoever can figure out what the first picture is of.

What I've been thinking...

Hello Everyone!

Cambodia went really well, and so did the last of Vietnam. I mostly just shopped some more, because everything there is insanely cheap. I don’t think I can express that enough. I bought all of the Star Wars movies for about $3, and a lot of my friends bought around 60 “Disney” movies for around twenty bucks. I have quotes there because the boxed set that the movies come in say that it’s a Disney collection, but it has movies in it like Shrek, Final Fantasy 7, and the Animatrix, which are clearly not Disney at all. The quality of the movies are pretty decent, but every once in a while something will be screwed up. I say a water puppet performance on the last day also, which I enjoyed. The puppets are made out of wood that floats on water and are controlled by puppeteers behind a curtain using metal rods. It’s pretty interesting how it all works.

On another note, I’ve been thinking a lot about my life. A lot of you know that I don’t know what I want to do after college, and I don’t even know what major I want to be. I’ve been hoping that this journey around the world would help me somehow to open up my eyes, and it has. I love traveling, and I want to help people. I’ve talked to a few of my new friends about a lot of things, and they’ve convinced me to join the Army after all of this is over. It would solve all of my money problems, allow me to travel the world, and I believe that I could help people. I know it may seem like a sudden decision, but I’ve been turning it over in my mind for a while. I haven’t decided what to do about college yet, whether I should finish it out with some major or not, but I’ll let everyone know when I think more about it.

I’ll update again sometime in China!