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so this it folks. one part of my time in china ends and another begins. our graduation ceremony was this morning, and the language pledge ended, whereupon i discovered that our resident director has an incredible southern drawl. besides a speech by the representative of the university's international institute that included overt references to our studying in china helping develop china's economy, the ceremony was actually pretty nice, with an excellent dvd/video/picture slide show thing that documented our semester.

and what a semester it's been! as you can tell, clark, my co-author of this blog, was attacked and killed by a rare chinese land shark shortly after our arrival in china. this prevented him from ever making a blog post. a few weeks ago we also lost durrell during a trip to shanghai. last we saw of him, he was driving off in a cab with some french girl and a brick of opium the size of a mini-fridge. china weeds out the week, and only the strong can survive to sit in internet bars and post to some rarely-read blog. but on a more serious note, we all had an absolute blast this semester, and it's an experience that will affect us for the rest of our lives. i couldn't have been luckier than to be able to come to china this semester and make the friends i did. i'd just like to send out a big, official thank you to my mom and dad, whose seemingly bottomless pockets when it comes to my education and endless love and support made it all possible.

so what's up next for your fearless author? well i'll tell you. tyler and i are skipping town tomorrow and heading to xian for a night, then off to xinjiang, where the women flock like the salmon of capastrano, or so i've heard. in fact, if you mention any place in china, chinese people will tell you that the women there are very beatiful, except in hangzhou, where west lake eclipses all. after xinjiang, tyler and i are going to skit around the edges of tibet, down in sichuan where we split up and i venture into yunnan all by myself. afterwards, i'm off to hong kong for a few days, then i'm flying down to vietnam to meet everybody's favorite communist duc! then i'm back home on august 2nd. whew!

what does that mean for you, gentle readers? sporadic updates, no gaurentees about pictures until i get to kunming around the 4th of July, but some wild and crazy stories nevertheless. so stay tuned, and send me some e-mails to keep me entertained while waiting for buses and trains in dusty desert outposts. also, if you want anything from kashgar, the craziest market town in the world, let me know and i'll think about it.

yours, etc. BEN

p.s. here are some pictures of our last ping-pong class where we held a tournament. the first is me devestated after coming in dead last, and the second is our class (with our coach on the right) after clark directed us to look "really happy."