Quick update

I added two new blogs to the sidebar. Finland for thought is about an American living in Finland and is an interesting place to read about Finnish life and culture and, especially, how foreigners see it. Baghdad Burning is kept by an Iraqi young woman living in Baghdad, and is in parts a truly gripping account of life in Iraq today. I hope you find the blogs worthwhile!

The beginning week will bring for me a beginning year as well. Tomorrow, Martin and I will go to pick up our passports from the Chinese embassy. I'm afraid the visit last Wednesday wasn't as ethnically gripping as I would have wished - no rippling brook running through a bamboo garden, no flute music playing from the radio and no noodles served at the counter. All we got was two activists holding a silent demonstration against the Chinese government's latest cruel acts and an office worker whose English was, to say the least, cryptic. Next to him, a woman was silently arranging a huge bunch of passports and putting them into boxes. We had to inform where in China we are going even though we don't know yet - apparently we will anyway not be "obligated" to visit that exact place even though it'll be typed in the visa.