Leaving on a Jet Plane

Bob Schneider strumming from my computer, uploading pictures of my friends, a stomach stretched with pizza and pie a la mode, and someone besides Rick Sanchez talking on CNN; I can't help feeling surrounded by the things I'm going to miss about this country. In eleven hours my plane leaves for Canada, and Wednesday evening I land in Beijing, beginning my four months in China. This means, apart from moving into a room that hasn't just been stained by my dog, that I have 26 hours of airline liquor and Shrek Forever After to ease my cultural transition. One of those things will make the other one better.

With this post I officially become a blogger, mainly because I don't want to answer the same questions twenty times when I return. Hopefully being surrounded by a nation whose language I can't yet speak grants me a few insights into Chinese culture and the nature of the individual that I can articulate understandably. Possibly not. Regardless of how it turns out, I am ready to go. So, to conclude my first blog post, I present the things I'm expecting when I arrive in Beijing:

• A feeling of being tremendously lost, because I haven't seriously practiced Chinese in a couple months, but mainly because I'll actually get lost.
• Permissiveness of tremendous alcohol consumption.
• Being viewed as a curiosity, cultural ambassador, and an easy mark. 
• Introduction to Chinese history as viewed in China.
• Determining how easily a willing westerner can assimilate into local culture.

Game on China.