No more traveling for a while, but something else new and exciting will turn our lives upside down in about 5 weeks' time. Hope our little girl will love traveling as much as we do! If all goes well, she'll take her first plane ride to France for her grandma's 60th birthday when she's around 3 months old.

Found this link on my friend Melodie's blog where you can map the US States and countries you've been. Apparently the 42 countries I've visited doesn't even make up a fifth of the world!

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

After almost 7 months in the Jinger, we arrived back home in the bay area today. The first thing i noticed was that I no longer have to use squat toilets in public places. I don't mind them too much but it's a luxury to not have to use them anymore.

The last month or two went by especially fast, Charlie traveled a few times outside the country for work and I was kept busy with end of program activities and a conference at UNFPA.

We managed to escape the cold weather and pollution by taking a weeklong trip to nothern Yunnan, the southwestern most province in China, right before we headed back to the States.

The traveling is not over yet though, we're about to hop in a car and head out to Santa Fe via Vegas to visit the nephews and then hopefully some skiing in the rockies on our way back.

Hong Kong is upgrading our ID cards to Smart cards. Since there are about 6.9Million cards to replace, they think it will take 4 years. My 'call time' is coming up end of this year which means an excuse to go there! I think it's about time I get a new ID to replace the photo that was taken when I was 15! And thank goodness the website provided the following information:

Q: How do you take a good photo for your smart ID card?

A: The following tips may help to take a good photo for your smart ID card:-
- Face the camera with an easy expression.
- It is unnecessary to wear make-up to look your best in the picture.
- If you prefer to wear make-up, please make it light and avoid using cosmetics that are dark in tone.
- Have plenty of sleep and rest to maintain a fresh and lively look.
- If you wear glasses, remember non-reflective lens will produce better results.
- Wear darker coloured clothes with collar.

Here is an illustrated trip to work in Beijing by Karen. She was on the back of motorcycle taxi, 'Mo Di' in Mandarin. If you listen you can hear Karen speaking Mandarin in some of them. Here is the series in order, each is about 3 megs AVI file: Kind_of_Dangerous,GasBike,turnedaround, Im_in_a_modi_right_now, beijing_bike_lane.

Here is a morning shot of our apartment complex, the Moma, or 'Wan Guo Cheng'. You can see the pond, and one of the 4 new buildings being constructed.
p.s. Some Mongolia pics are up, look for link over to the right under Photos.