Hello world!

The idea behind writing this blog is to efficiently let many people know what I'm up to over this summer. For those who don't know, I've got quite the adventure planned out; it begins with 3 weeks of vacationing in Southeast Asia, and then I will go north to Beijing to be subjected to an 8 week intensive Mandarin language program. Throw in a few days of planes and trains, and it rounds up to a 3 month summer.

I've just finished the first leg of my trip, which was a week in Hong Kong. Judging from how I've spent my time so far, and how little I've written, I think my entries will be few and far between at least until I get settled in Beijing. At least I took a lot of pictures in Hong Kong (a bit of a racial role reversal from what I normally see in the bay area), so when I finally get some time to write about my experiences, I won't be relying totally on memory.