For those of you who haven’t heard of the 2007 China Blog Awards, let me give you the low down.Over at Chinalyst, there is a competition of sorts taking place. It’s basically a venue created for people to vote for their favorite China blogs. Well, as you can imagine, being a China blogger, I am one of the many in the running for the pretty award you see to your left.

I’m not going to beg or anything(oh, please, please, vote for me) but I thought I would at least bring it to your attention so as to give you the opportunity to voice your opinion. 🙂

Voting is fairly simple. All you need to do is click on any of the blue links you see in this post or the picture with the pretty award, scroll down until you see my blog’s long title strewn across your screen and click on the little plus sign below it. And wallah, your done!

After you give my blog some love, you can peruse the many other China blogs that perhaps you haven’t stumbled upon yet. There are a lot of good ones out there. Maybe you will find some more blogs that you feel like voting for – there are several different categories. Mine is under personal blogs, if you didn’t know.

Thanks a bunch.

I’m such a bad American.

Somehow or another, I completely forgot about the Fourth of July. I probably would have forgotten about it all together had I not hopped on the computer at out hotel/hostel in Yangshuo to email my folks back home. After quickly composing the “I’m fine and it’s beautiful here” email to them, I scanned through the ones that I had received since leaving Xiamen on the first of July. Strangely, this was the first and only time in the span of six days that I surfed the world wide web. I think it’s a personal best, really, considering my awful addiction to the the great WWW. I guess Yangshuo kept me pretty busy because I didn’t really think much of it until I got back to Xiamen this afternoon. I’ve more or less been on my computer ever since. Heh. 🙂

So yeah, the whole idea that the Fourth of the July had actually come and gone a whole day earlier didn’t even register until I read these words at the bottom of my Dad’s email. “Hoping you have a safe and patriotic Independence Day!” I had to stop and think about what it said for a second.

“Independence Day?” I thought to myself. “The Fourth of July?” I looked down at the date on my watch. A little 5 stared back at me. “Is it really the fifth of July?” I then looked at the date on the right hand corner of the computer. “Holy crap, it is the fifth!”

I guess the lack of American flags, firework stands and constant TV ads to remind me made me completely forget that it was that time of year. That is how it is for most holidays here in China. Unless it’s Christmas, all the other holidays you grew up celebrating sort of fade into the background. To keep the traditions going in this home so far away from home, I have to try my best to remember when the holidays are even if I am not surrounded by all the decorations and other hoopla related to them. Lucky for me, I’m in China, the land that invented fireworks. If I really want to, I can go down and buy a warehouse full of fireworks and celebrate with all the hoopla I want until I am blue in the face. And since I can do that, I think I just might.

Who cares if it is a few days late. It’s the thought that counts.
I’ll start posting my 4.2 GB of pictures tomorrow that I collected on my trip to Yangshuo, but for now I am going to bed.