It is going on 9 p.m. Friday evening here in Kumning. Which means that many of you are just beginning your day and counting down the hours until the weekend. I’m still adjusting to the time change (13 hours forward if you didn’t do the math already). When jet lagged in Egypt a lot of the time I found myself waking up in the middle of the night. Some days I wake up at 6 am and can’t fall asleep, but for the most part I seem to have the whole going to bed when its dark, and waking up when it’s light thing down. However throughout the day I really drag…once 1 p.m. hits I’m fighting my bodys urge to fall asleep and return to the cycle I’ve known the past 6 months. I perk right back up around 8 at night when it seems like it should really be time for morning….but I go through these bouts where I feel that nauseousness you get from pulling an all nighter. I think tomorrow it should be well underway though.

The 20 plus hours of traveling and walking around various airports was surreal but in retrospect passed by relatively quickly. This includes the 2 extra hours I had to spend filing paperwork for the luggage that never arrived. It was a painstaking process as I was absolutely exhausted and beyond frustrated trying to talk to a woman who did not know any english and fill out a form that was covered in chinese characters. Meanwhile they would not let my field director, Alice, come and help translate…which of course is understandable because of air port security…but at the same time it really took a lot for me to try and shrug it off as something small I could do nothing about…there was a brief moment when I thought I was just going to start sobbing like an over exhausted child. I am proud to say that despite everything I did not shed a single tear. I was happy that I had packed extra clothes in my carry on in case something like this did happen. Since my plane didn’t arrive until after midnight, after everything was done, I didn’t get back to the flat in Kunming until after 3 a.m.

Right now I am in downtown Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. There are not very many tourists here so I definitely stand out. It is a pretty lively place with a population of about 4 million, but lacks the chaos and crowding of places like Beijing and my former home away from home, Cairo. The character of Kunming changes depending on the time of day. When I got in at 3 am, everything was dark and empty. The cab dropped us off in an alley. As the rain poured down, I stared at the ground dreading the idea of spending the next 6 weeks in a place that was shady in its demeanor and that left me feeling uneasy and unsettled. However, the next day, the sun exposed the upbeat and friendly atmosphere that hung from the awnings of Kunming’s quaint boutiques and restaurants. In the day, Kunming is a bustling place with street vendors selling hot pots, produce, and roasted peanuts. People weave in and out of each other’s way, on foot, on car, on scooter…it is a very strange hub of small shops, with everything you could ever need pretty close at hand….hiking/outdoor stores, salons, bars, theaters, restaurants, café’s…but all still without any sort of western or consumerist feel to it because every place is very mom and pop. Kunming is also interesting in terms of its racial diversity. Very few people here are actually Chinese, they are usually a mix of some sort. They speak of their minority clans and their minority lineages. Nonetheless I still stand out…Alice said that the fact that I wear matching clothes will make me stand out more than anything. Everyone else maintains a pretty loud and wild style…a lot of bright colors and mismatching of pattern. Kunming nightlife is probably my favorite…the whole city is painted with bright flourescent lights and glows unlike anything I’ve ever seen. If you saw this in America, it would look tacky and tasteless, but here it just seems so appropriate. It conveys a sense of free spiritedness that I find pretty unique, but I also haven’t seen places like Vegas lit up back in the states.

It didn’t take long for my luggage to arrive. It turns out that I was supposed to get my luggage in Beijing and go through customs there, recheck it and have it sent to Kunming. However this was not what I was told when I was in Detroit…there I was told that I would not see my luggage again or have to do anything until I reached my final destination at Kunming Air Port. Lesson learned. This will hold true on the way back too….I will go through customs in Newark and not in Detroit- which is a nice thing because that means I can just walk straight out of the airport when I land in Detroit.

My misfortunes did not end with the missing luggage. The next day I went to purchase an international phone (probably about time I got one) and some cards with minutes on it to use for the rest of my time here. My jet lag left me pretty unattentive and unaware of my surroundings and it didn’t take long for my stuff to get stolen. It was a sad realization of a good amount of money lost- but again I kept my spirits up knowing it was just a phone and it could have been worse…it could have my been my purse with my passport or something like that. I was still super bummed though because I was planning on calling jeff when I got home.

To remedey the phone situation for now though, I downloaded Skype and paid for unlimited use of it which only costs 13 dollars a month. I can call any landline or mobile in the US. So that is nice.

Today, we hike through the Western Hills.



It is a mountain range in Southern Kunming which holds various ancient buddhist temples. We hiked through the mountains, combining some site seeing with work as we looked down on where the site we will be surveying is. At one of the temples tehre was a statue of a Turtle. Alice turned to Matt and I and said that it is supposed to be good luck to touch the head of the turtle. The three of us looked down at it- each person kind of holding back but projecting the urge to touch the head despite the superstition behind it….I then blurted out…”I’m touchin it!....With everything happening to me so far I need some good luck.”

Our hike covered a good 10 km which is good practice since survey work will have us covering 12 km a day.





Those are kind of the happenings as they stand now. Monday we have to meet with customs and let them look through our computers. Then we have a subsequent banquent and meeting with the Chinese officials to go over some of the rules and things to be aware of while working here. Tuesday we pack up and leave the flat and head to the rural outskirts of Kunming. Our hotel is supposed to have wireless like I mentioned, and I am really hoping that it does so that I can remain in contact. If not it is going to be really difficult especially since we will be working straight through the first two weekends.

It is really different being a part of a project that is just beginning. It really allows for you to learn in a different way- exposes you to how things happen and what can go wrong before the shovels come out. I’m excited to learn more.