1 Day and Change Before Beijing

Last night my home team, the Boston Celtics, had a chance to pick the best Chinese player since Yao Ming. Yi Jianlian was heralded as the next great hope for Chinese basketball, but the C's passed. Instead we traded a few players for all-star Ray Allen and my boy from LSU, "Big Baby" Glen Davis! I believe the sun will rise again for the Celtics franchise...someday (as Communism did for China under Mao). Hopefully we're moving in the right direction.

Well, the bags are packed and its go time. It took most of the day today to fit everything in my luggage. Today marked the first time I've had to weigh my bags for a flight. Pretty strange if you ask me. Speaking of strange, one strange sighting was seeing a super-size package of 24 rolls of toilette paper in my luggage. Another first for trip packing. I guess you never know when a roll of toilette paper will come in handy (ie. when you're out in the countryside and there's a big hole in the ground). Sometimes you've just got to do your business when the conditions aren't so favorable.

So this is my last blog post before Bejing. I'll be in the air for about 25 hours (if you're counting the 12 hour time change, the flight is only 13 hours long...only 13 hours long). I see it as 25 hours. So the language pledge begins...NO ENGLISH or you go home. It's as simple as that. 5 hours of Chinese/day, 3 hours of Chinese/week of chatter with the locals, >50 new Chinese characters/day. All that spells I-N-T-E-N-S-E. BUT I'M PSYCHED! It's going to be great. China for 6 months. Let's Go. 走把！