7:30am.

The biological alarm clock has woken me up in time for work. That's sweet of me. Very reliable.

But in fact, I have been telling everyone that I leave for China on Wednesday April 23rd. So far no one has said what I have been thinking. Which is that this is a preposterous and ridiculous idea. China. Mongolia.

The plane takes off in.. seven hours and fifteen minutes. I have no idea what to expect. I'm not even really sure how I'll find Vijay. Somehow though after all the snags I've hit so far, I have a feeling that it will all just come together.

I am in denial. What I do have is a lot of film, three cameras, a blank book for general writing and drawing and a book with songs to play on my sister's ukulele. Not a bad instrument for $20ish dollars. Not bad at all.

If it's true that I'm about to ship myself to a series of countries where I speak none of the languages. Aside from a few off-tone words in Mandarin. I think this will be my bravest adventure yet.

I've heard that Blogger is magically difficult to access within the PRC. I have been advised by various parties to both keep myself to myself and deliver a swift kick to the tenders of the people in charge, but I've been reading up. I haven't decided what I think yet. All I can say for certain is that life in China has been very different from the life I've had here. For better or worse, I haven't ruled out that idea (don't remember whose it was. Freud? he can't have thought of everything..) that most people are trying to do what's right and have the same values at heart, but with very different manifestations of how that should play out in the real world. So, a culture clash. I don't agree with everything they do, but I don't agree with everything almost anyone does. Obv, there are magnitudes of scale to consider, but I'm not going to hate on anyone till I feel like I get it from their point of view.

So this will be a trip about eyes and ears and chance and letting go. An adventure.