Okay, it's been a while, I'll admit.

It's been a busy year. The short and public version is that several of us who went to China last year are going again, and we're taking several new people with us. The long and un-public version of this story has to do with how this trip unfolded (and refolded, and unfolded, and refolded, and unfolded).

On a not unrelated note, I am looking around for a blog to which I can add subscribers, because I really wanted to tell you, my small circle of friends, all about it and to solicit your advice. But I couldn't do that in a blog that's open to the universe . . .

At any rate, suffice to say that the whole experience makes me feel like one of those people who are thrown "into the arms of some idea from which they cannot find relief," as the song goes. I feel like this is what I was born to do; I have always straddled the boundaries between two cultures and two (sometimes three) languages, I love to travel and I love to live abroad even more, I love to learn languages, and I love to teach. Designing a summer-camp-style learning environment for ESL learners in their native country . . . could it get any better than that for me? I don't know . . .

Anyhow, I'm leaving on Monday (yikes!) for Beijing (where it is 100 degrees F - in contrast to Lansing, where it was 60 today). I'll stay there and hang out with my friend Ying for four days, then I'll go to Harbin. From all indications, there are a lot of people in Harbin who are waiting to see us . . . I wasn't really prepared for that. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by it, actually, but at the same time I can't wait to get there.

I will send updates, I promise, and I really hope that soon I will have a members-only blog with the notification features I want. Cross your fingers on that one . . .