Shanghai, China to Memphis, TN
August 2, 2008

Goodbye China. Today was a bittersweet day, a looong bittersweet thirty three hour day. I will truly miss my time in China. The people in this country made us all feel so welcome, not just our tour guides, support staff at Hubei University, and the Fulbright people; everyone. From the shop keepers to the fellow train riders to well everyone who opened up their country to us and captured out imagination and heart.

Here is a brief recap of our last hours in Shanghai. Paul and I joined many others at the Yu Garden bazaar and market. We did our final haggling as we bought some last minute gifts before our journey home. We took a final cab crazy cab ride, after getting kicked out of one cab. I am still not sure of the reason for that.

We completed our final packing, trying to cram the last minute purchases into our bags. We all met down in the lobby for the bus ride to Shanghai’s Pudong airport. We all said goodbye to our guide Snow. Most of us, except for Sabrina, had an easy time with Chinese customs and there we waited for our flight. I watched one movie, “The Other Boleyn Girl” ate dinner took a sleeping pill and other than a few interruptions slept the next eight hours. The trip went quick. We all had a carefree customs experience in Atlanta and then had some chips and salsa at Mexican restaurant in the airport. It tasted great.

Our flight from Atlanta to Memphis was delayed about two hours so I did not get back to the “M” town till around 11:45pm. I got home and got some sleep.

For both the regular readers of the blog plus anyone who hopped on for the ride I will be spending this week with some recollections and comments, I will even share a few stories that could not be written till I returned to the states. Let’s just say I had a run in with some very polite and nice Chinese Security officers who objected to one of my photos; I believe it was an ICBM. I will fill in later when I have more time and more energy.

I have some other good news. I am coming back to China in October! Remember that program I applied to before I left for DC at the beginning of the summer, well I got in. (Link to blog entry) I will be traveling to China and Japan for two weeks in the middle of October. The program in through Columbia University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. It is through the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. Both UTC and Columbia have great resources for teaching about Asia. I was eligible for the program because I did summer seminar at Ole Miss’s Croft Institute for International Studies about four or five summers ago. I am stoked because I will teach my classes from China and Japan via pod cast and other internet technologies while establishing a partnership with a classroom in China and Japan.

More details later.