30 Days

Haidian District
Beijing, China

To My Readers...

I have not posted in 30 days. Sorry about that...

For someone who reads my blog, but has not spent time in North America, something is missing. That person is without an understanding of the North American version of 'expected'. Many of my posts, especially my earliest posts, are written from a North American perspective on what is 'expected'.

For those of you who actually know me well, I probably mentioned that I wanted to use this site to capture first impressions... things that I found interesting, because they are different from the way things are where I come from (the US).

As I fully expected -- I'm not really surprised by much anymore. I was here for 30 days, and my entries became a list of "here are the things that I did." I was hoping to keep having stories of things that were funny to me, because they are unexpected.

Something else also happened around 30 days ago. Several people that I work with in China started to ask about my blog. I got five people with various forms of the question, "Why don't you like it in China?" If you were one of the sources ... don't be embarrassed, you are not alone. Clearly, I placed a few too many 'expectations' to make things sound 'wrong'.

In reality - the only thing I have been disappointed about is bread. Bread that tastes like US bread is so hard to find. I did find a brand and type, but it's usually out of stock at the local HyperMarket. It is "close enough".

Done?

I don't think so, not completely, but maybe. I have a few things in the back of my mind about shopping and food, but nothing about these things is interesting enough for me to write about now. I still have a while to go.

Photos

The connection at the hotel sucks. I am still uploading photos. Some newer ones have even made it to the "Public" photo pages. I'm trying to comment those as they go up, but I'm very far behind in that, too.