Happy 4th!

As of 12:00pm Eastern time Friday, I am outta here! Well... I'm out of Westfield, Hamilton County, and Indiana that is. Mom, Dad, Gus, and I are hitting the road tomorrow. We've got hotel arrangements in Des Plaines, IL and plan to hit up the Chicago 4th of July celebration tomorrow night. Bando Kelly will be meeting up with us (yay!) and showing this Hillbilly Circus how to function in the big city.

Saturday morning we're up early and taking our show to the O'Hare Airport. Hopefully we'll be meeting up with my travel buddies (Jason, Traci & Val- check out their blogs!) for some breakfast/get to know the family time. Our flight is at 10:35am Central time, so be thinking of me while you're doing whatever you do on Saturdays at 10:35am Chicago time :)

We land in Shanghai Sunday at 2pm local time (2am Sunday Indy time) and take off for Beijing Sunday night at 9pm local time (Sunday 9am Indy time). Finally, at approximately 11pm local time (11am Indy time), I land in the capital city and grab a cab to the Communication University of China.

The campus is in the 5th ring of the city. If you're unfamiliar, Wikipedia.com is a great reference. In fact, Wikipedia is a great reference for any random thing you don't know. One of my favorite sites :)

Anywho, CUC's in the 5th ring (along with many of the Olympic venues). We're staying in the "International Exchange Building," which is a dorm for international students studying at the school. My brother's classic comment was, "As if American dorm rooms weren't small enough..." I'm on the 8th floor, but that's about all I know. Oh yeah, they have washing machines for laundry... but no dryers. I hope to have more details about that soon.

One last note before shutting it down and hitting the hay. Try for a moment to wrap your brain around this... What does one pack for a two month trip? It's hard enough to pack for a week! Here's my list: 24 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of capris, 2 pairs of shorts, several pairs of basketball shorts (thank you HS sports teams), ~20 tshirts, a handful of nicer tops, and one Purdue hoodie. That's not to mention the second checked bag that is stocked FULL of toiletries A-Z, medications, toilet paper, towels and shoes. I predicted 3 tubes of deodorant. I'll let you know how close my prediction comes :)

Again, no Internet access for me until Tuesday unless I get really lucky. You'll have to make this one last until then!

XOXO