Tom here, trying to get the feel of this site. As internet time will be pay-as-you-go once we're in China, not to mention I want to spend as much time doing things rather than figuring out this website once I'm there, I thought it would be good to learn how to use this site before heading out. I expect to be very very tired at the end of each day, so anything that might give me an excuse not to blog might very well derail the activity completely, and I'd really like to be at least fairly regular with this. I haven't checked the comments feature, but I'm hoping it will be fairly robust, as it would be a nice way to have some contact with the people from home.

Oh and I am not quite sure what Mike meant by the "narcissistic indulgements of self-publishing," but I intend to include a couple pictures with each post. Taking lots of pictures will definitely be one of my main activities in China. I think that it will be a really good time for me to work on my photography, as I'll have plenty of interesting material as well as little else i need to accomplish with my free time.

OK. for now, I'll conclude with a picture of a inchworm, purely to make sure i can figure out how to put up pictures on this site.
OK so the picture thing doesn't seem to be working. I don't feel like dealing with it now.