Beijing (but not for long)

So when I can, I'll post pictures, but when I get home, I'll post them to the entries after the fact, so check back if you're curious.

I rolled into the city last night around 5, and one of Professor Wang's student met me at the airport. Olympics preparations are well underway and you can see stadiums peeking out at you from all over the place. I'm staying at the same place Pete always stays (it is all organized through our colleauges at the China University of Geosciences - Chinese geologists get their own University!), so he gave me the inside line on the important places. Pete is another grad student in my department; he brought me on to this project, which is his thesis work, to collect and analyze all the geochemical samples.

One is this internet cafe. Pete's description was of a hole-in-the-wall entrance, stairs leading down to an internet cafe. What he didn't say is that the stairs open into a room that has a huge bank of 100+ computers (bigger than I remember the UW computer bank in the library being), complete with high school-aged boys playing the kinds of computer games that seem like they could suck weeks of your life away in a single sitting.

I spent the morning doing a few errands. I stopped into a grocery/convenience store to buy some snacks for the early flight to Dunhuang tomorrow, and heard a muzak version of that terrible song from the movie Titanic playing over the loud speakers. I felt like I could have been back in the Safeway at home; it is good to know some things in life are universal.

This afternoon I went to the Summer Palace for a little sightseeing; the sky seemed like it was ready to open up the whole time, but it never did more than spit and the Palace and gardens were beautiful.


Tomorrow morning I'm getting on a plane and flying to Dunhuang, where Pete & Co. are picking me up and driving straight to Golmud. I think we'll be there for a day or two, to acclimate as much as anything else.

Book suggestions?

Hey all, this is a quick request for book suggestions. I'm going to try to hit the store this weekend or Monday for some *light* reading for Tibet (and later I guess). So, email me or comment with a book or two you've read recently and highly recommend.

Minneapolis!

I had a great weekend back in the old hometown. The guise was my high school friend Sarah Swenson's (now Wineke) wedding. Somehow, the timing on this trip worked out better than I could have planned; Lundi's sister's wedding was this weekend so she was back from LA and Alison and Jon were in town visiting so I got to see the whole Anders clan as well.

Highlights:
Seward garage sale days - Growing up in Seward is a little like growing up in a small town surrounded by a city. During garage sale days anyone in the neighborhood with stuff to sell has a garage sale. Think of it as one-stop shopping for frugal treasures while running into people whose kids you went to school with for years. Ilana did an admirable job haggling (although, the reality of haggling is a little weird in Minnesota); I should take her with me to Tibet since I’m pretty terrible at it. I used the sales as an excuse to wander through the old neighborhood, and voyeuristically case my childhood home, now under new ownership. Dan asked me a couple of weeks ago if it is weird to go back with no home to go to; he hasn't been back since Mom & Dad moved to Seattle. I'd say yes, but it is nice to think of a new set of kids hanging from the rafters in the attic and leaving hand prints all over the stairway.

BBQ'ing at the Anders' - complete with the usual Rudy comments about mudballs and "that red-headed kid", Mattie the dog trying to kill the neighbor's cat and just generally, spending a beautiful May evening out in the back yard.

First project samples! – I picked up a whole selection of mussel shells from the Bell Museum collections this morning. I had hoped this would mean a free trip to the Bell Museum on the U of M campus, since I haven’t been there in years. Instead it meant a free trip to the invertebrate collection in the basement of the ecology building on the St. Paul campus.

The Wedding of course – Sarah looked happy and terrific, and there was plenty of dancing and bowling; the reception was in Coffman Union (U of M) and the downstairs has bowling lanes, a few of which were reserved for the wedding. It was nice to hang out with folks I don’t get to see much. I’m not sure how it works, but though we are rarely all in the same place at the same time, we manage to just pick up where we left off.


Umm, looks like we had fun....

The Summer of Katie in a Car

Ok, here's the rough schedule of my life from now until September. For those of you out west or in the Midwest, have a peek and see if/when I'm going to be in your neck of the woods. I can't promise I'll have had a shower recently, but I may stop by...

Aspects of this are hazier than others, and I'll add details as the summer evolves:

Late May:
5/17 - 5/21 Minneapolis! (Wedding shenanigans; don't worry, not mine)

June:
5/29 - 6/13 Tibet! (Geologic shenanigans)
6/13 - 6/21 Santa Cruz (frantic field work planning shenanigans)
6/23 - 6/28 Powell, Wyo (Scientific coring shenanigans)

July:
6/29 - ? NV, then UT, then CO (sample collecting, LOTS of driving)

End July-Early August:
dates? NE, SD, IA, MN (more but different sample collecting, more driving)

August:
8/19 - 8/25 Cologne, Germany (Goldschimdt geochem conference)
8/25 - ? Santa Cruz (sleeping, eating, running and not getting in a car)

Back to the roots

A prairie home companion felt oddly relevant this morning. For the midwestern contingent, I hope you all caught the parent-phone-call sketch and the monologue in the second half of the show. It pretty much covered all the bases for me, made me laugh and I'm excited to be back there in a couple days. Save some lilacs for me, I'll be there soon!

Global FOO

In the course of a conversation with Sabe & Tom (college friends), we got on the subject of the terms "Global Warming" vs "Global Climate Change". Global Warming is an accurate term, at least in the context of the average global condition, but it doesn't really reflect differences in local and regional climate response to global warming (like the fact that Europe will likely get colder as a result) - hence, the term "global climate change." But, this term (to me anyway) makes it sound as though the current situation is a strictly natural phenomenon.

So, here is a new term, complete with an easy acronym: Global _ing Ourselves Over. Fill in the blank.

Catchy, accurate, what more could you want? Thanks Tom!