Bought a computer!

Despite my constant exhortations to students to use their computers more, I haven't had one of my own in a long time. Oh, I have one at work and my husband has one that I use. But it's his work computer, since he works at home, so it's pretty inconvenient. And often I just go to my office so I can work on the computer (and the networked email works better there too.) But yesterday I bought one! And it only cost $450! It's not my dream computer (that would be some kind of Mac laptop) but it's so new it works beautifully! It took no time to set up and since we have wireless at home I could start right up on email and blogging! So happy! What was I waiting for? It weighs 6.5 pounds and I will take it to China and Japan, where I am heading on Thursday. I'll be with 12 students from the college where I teach and it will be quite an adventure. I'm teaching a class on Travel Writing and I've been reading lots of travel books and guides. Went through "Culture Shock - Japan" and "Culture Shock - China" this morning. The first one is excellent - very specific - and the second is too general to be much use. Not to mention that it was published in 1990, supposedly "updated" in 2004. But not too well - has the tone of a slightly cranky British businessman who wants to tell the Chinese a thing or two and much prefers Hong Kong. And it suggests you can't bargain in China, which is the absolute opposite of what we saw in June and July. That's because the China he s writing about - at least the Beijing he writes about - has changed utterly.