Back from Hiatus

After a trip to the Chinese-North Korean border, a two week vacation due to the 60th Anniversary of the PRC/Mid-Autumn Festival/Preventing-the-Spread-of-Swine-Flu Measures, and after getting fed up with free proxies not working buying a VPN (Strong VPN has saved my Chinese internet experience), I'm back to blogging.

Unfortunately a 60th Anniversary/Mid-Autumn Festival/Swine Flu 2 week vacation/cancellation of classes isn't the most inspired time for blogging and next week I have midterms so my time is also somewhat limited. But I plan to get back to my regularly scheduled blogging as soon as my regularly scheduled life resumes.

We did take a trip to Lafashan (Lafa Mountain) and Hongyegu (Red Leaf Valley) over the weekend so I'll attach some pictures from that.



The Chinese guy who tried to kidnap me at Lafashan. No, I'm not kidding. And might I add that this picture severely over-represents his height.



View from the top of Lafashan (which took us about 3 1/2 hours to climb, might I add)



Red-leafed Tree in the Red Leaf Valley



Jarrett and I (check out Jarrett's Blog!!!)

H1N1 is soooo last month

Guess the Chinese didn't get the memo that Swine Flu is soooo last month (Right, Mike!). First it was the Mexicans, which I briefly discussed in an earlier post, now they're quarantining American middleschoolers. When will the madness end?

SARS versus Swine Flu - China's Attempts to Contain Potential Pandemics

The Chinese just can't get it right. SARS was a huge issue because they tried to suppress it for so long and tried to keep it out of the eye of the international media. So now it seems that they are trying to make up with overarching measures to contain the spread of swine flu by quarantining dozens of innocent and healthy Mexicans in China. But their actions are unnecessary and discriminatory and flirt with the line that marks what is just simply racist.

F.Y.I: I realize this post is much shorter than my other ones but I'm working on writing blerps, mini-blog posts commenting on different websites, which means I have learn how to not ramble in posts like I usually do.