Choosing to visit China

Spinning a globe of the earth and pointing to a country at random is a rather China biased way of choosing a holiday destination.

The first reason is that the place is huge. Second is that from your vantage point sitting above the globe you are more likely to point to the northern hemisphere. Lastly you didn't want to loose digits to frostbite in Russia.

I am not quite sure how I came to choose China, but that was my choice; embodied by the one way plane ticket to Xian sitting in my top draw. It is just six weeks until I leave; a trip that will combine cramming 6 foot 5 inches of pure James into a budget airline seat and enough carbon dioxide to put my "TV off standby" global warming efforts to shame.

At this point my Mandarin is liable to get me a pup of hot green pencils rather than some Chinese tea and any games of Chinese Chess I join will be over before you can say "ai you". But I've go six weeks. Right now I am waiting to find out just exactly what volunteer work I will be involved in while I am there, very excited and mildly terrified at the same time.