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Hi! Sorry for the lack of blogs, but the last 10 days of the trip have been quite busy - it felt like we were either seeing a sight or travelling at any given time... not so much 'free time' as Micheal likes to call it. So in order not to bore anyone by detailed stories of each day, I'll just run through the sights and what I thought of them :) Luoyang - Longmen (Dragon Gate) Caves - Sept 20th - 100's of caves and grottos cut into a cliff. Huge and small Buddha's found in each. It was impressive [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone!!!! I'm currently sitting in a hotel room with a computer - fantastic. I thought about going for a beer, but the trade off of being able to update my blog in a smoke free room was just not worth it :) I'm sure the beer will be waiting in a 1/2 hour :) So back to Shanghai. I think we found one of the bigger bars in town, but it was definitely predominately Germans in the crowd... funny, you assume any foreigners speak English but so far that has not been the case. It was a fun night out [View Full Entry]

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Hi! I hope everyone had a great week! I've had a less exciting week than my first, but still a good time. I'm not sure if it's the food/tummy or if I'm just feeling like 4 weeks in China is PLENTY of time to visit, but I've been feeling a bit burnt out recently. We meet up with our 9 new group members tonight and I think there's a lot more to see on the second half of the trip, so I hope the feeling goes away! Hangzhou is a city a few hours from Shanghai. We actually flew Shanghai after [View Full Entry]

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After our long night and day of travel we headed to the 3 Gorge Dam. I don't know if it was the long travel day or the dam, but I was not all that interested... even though it is quite impressive. The dam is the biggest in the world - 2.3 kim across. When it is finished - 2009 or 2010, the water level will actually rise 175m. This is causing 1.3 million people to relocate higher up in the mountains or to big cities. The dam should be able to stop some of the flooding issues they've had along the [View Full Entry]

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Hello again my faithful readers :) So I left off in the beautiful (yet touristy) town of Yangshou. The ride down the Li River was quite lovely - quiet and peaceful. The mountains (or limestone Karsts for any geologists reading) are 1000's of little peaks surrounding the town and river - and they are quite stunning. Everything is green and lush and the river was quite clean. We did get to see a group of 3 Karsts that are found on the $20 bill. We've dubbed this trip the "Currency tour". After a dinner we headed on what I like to [View Full Entry]

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Hi! So I made it in and out of Hong Kong okay. The 13 hour flight wasn't as bad as I thought it might be - three movies, an O magazine and the first few chapters of Anna Kerena later, I had arrived. I didn't make it to the hotel until after 10pm (8am at home), so I was ready for bed... unfortunately, regardless of how tired I was, my body didn't really know it and I was up every hour from 3 until 7 at which time I thought I might as well get up. Had I realized that nothing [View Full Entry]

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This last month I've spent organizing for a trip of life time and yet it hasn't really sunk in that I'm leaving. I don't know what it's going to take.. the trip to the airport? The 14 hour flight? Or will it be when I'm a foot and a half taller than everyone around me? Quitting my job and the last day of work wasn't really as bad as I anticipated. Maybe it was b/c I wsan't leaving to work somewhere else. Or maybe it's b/c we're in Calgary - a city where I can't leave my house without running into [View Full Entry]

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I'm spending the afternoon at my office organizing my life - it seems I have to make lists every day just to make sure things come together for me! So I'm sitting in my non-AC office on a 32 degree Sunday afternoon so that I can enjoy August stress-free. This probably can't happen regardless of my efforts, but at least I'll feel like I'm in some sort of control :) [View Full Entry]

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