This website is my very subjective journal of my 2006 trip to China. I suppose I should apologize in advance for any thoughts or sarcastic expression that may offend or trample someone's sense of decorum or for any strange view of reality. I'm not trying for anything scholarly here.

Thursday, July 27, 2006 - At Chicago

Today I leave for China. I'll get as far as Chicago today. Some people took the bus, but I'm flying in from Houghton.

John wants something bamboo so I hope I can find something good.

I got in about 11:30 a.m. Chicago time and got a little lost trying to find the shuttle to the Crown Plaza hotel. I looked at the signs and some of the signs said to go to the shuttle and other signs said to go to the bus shuttle. I had great difficulty figuring out where either was. A great start! Apparently I don't understand English. On the other hand, airports in America seem to make the task of traveling difficult. Perhaps it's their creative way to keep people safe. A confused people is a safe people because the bad guys won't be able to get around at all. Anyway, you go around, down, and then up to get to the HOTEL shuttles. The hotel shuttle bus drivers say they come around every 20 minutes but since English is a second language here, they're really saying 50 minutes.

Well, I got to the hotel, checked in, and had some time to kill so I thought I'd try to go to the Field Museum of Natural History. Finding a way to the subway, though, proved more difficult than expected and I got lost -- not a good omen when you're going to a country on the other side of the world. I remember trying to dig my way to China when I was a kid and wondered if the food I left on my plate those many years ago ever got to the hungry over there. Little did China know that she was the foundation of many a guilt trip and tool of manipulation by American adults against the ignorant innocent.

Anyway, I found the subway and got as far as the Loop. By then, it was too late to go to the museum so I wandered around some, ate, and went to a movie in a REAL movie theater (as opposed to what we have here thirty miles from the end of earth). I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest again and actually heard the dialogue. Not bad dialogue by the way. At last I got smart and took the subway all the way back to O'Hare and, since I was now a traveling expert, took the hotel shuttle back to the hotel.

Boy, it was hot and humid here in Chicago, but it rained and cooled off downtown. The airport was still hot though. My roommate is the violinist and she's very nice.