Nothing has been as neglected as much as this blog has been this past year.  I hope to make some changes in this department.  We shall see… Check out this awesome photo Christa took in China.  This was one of the delicacies at the Tibetan wedding the girls attended.  Nice one!

I assume you’ve heard of the Pied Piper of Hamlin.  An entrepreneurial sort of man with a certain skill with wind instruments.  You might remember how he used the power of his music to escort all the mice and children…(gulp) out of Hamlin. But you might not have heard about the Piper’s modern day equivalent…Sir…

Well, we’re back from our retreat into the mountains.  We had a great time in Jianzha (pronounced roughy gin-jah in Chinese) and now we’re back in Xining getting back into our language study routine…which will be interupted next week with the onset of the "October holiday". I wish I had a lot of great photos…

Just wanted to give a hearty congratulations to my friend Bert and Company at Global Nomad ITS Services!  Tomorrow they will officially be celebrating their first year of business. If you don’t know about Global Nomad, please go take a look at their website.  I’ve met some of the Tibetan workers who are now designing…

Sorry for the lack of content this week.  It feels like quite a while since I’ve posted about anything but holidays (birthdays, anniversaries, dragon boat festivals, etc.)  This week we welcomed our first visitors to Xining.  Two friends from Florida (Cape Coral) arrived on Saturday evening and have been treated (or mistreated?) to all the…

Hi, everyone.  Here’s a few pictures from the girls’ trip to Jianca.  Christa mostly took pictures of the mountains on the way to the city.  There are only a few photos of the actual town…so I’ll have to go there this summer and take some other shots of the scenery.  I’m told there are real…

Well, I’m back from the latest journey–bathed, fed, and relaxing on the couch. To be honest I’m pretty wiped out. The trip went pretty well, but it was quite a lot of hiking for a "city boy" like me. It took about four hours to get to the mountain village pictured below and it took…

our gift to the village…

Adjust your packs, ladies and gentlemen. I think there were some important lessons learned (from my perspective) on this trip. The main one:  the only predictable thing out here is that things will be unpredictable. Our hopes were to meet with the village leaders of this remote town called Karong. My friends that I was…

looking a bit sheepish, boys