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So as you may or may not know, I, Sarah Cohodes, have been traveling with the illustrious Britta and Dan throughout Yunnan after spending a few days in Qingdao. We've moved on from Dali, and are now in Lijiang, which contains fewer loopy crunchy white tourists and many Chinese tourists. But the city is really cool with cobblestone roads and canals. Of course, maybe it was all "reconstructed" in 1996, but we're still enjoying it. We capitalized on Britta's penchant for meeting and chatting up random people and ended up hanging out with a Naxi (the local minority) shaman for most of yesterday. He reads and writes Naxi, the last hieroglyphic language still in use, but not a bit of Chinese. Britta seemed to understand his Mandarin very well, however. Anyway, he invited me to come back to Lijiang and be an apprentice in his shop and said he'd find me a Naxi husband. As tempting as it is to make books and live in China, I think I'm going to pass up on the offer -- he's a total chainsmoker.

Off to Beijing tomorrow (for me, B and D are going home). We'll see how I manage with my beyond rudimentary Chinese.

EDIT: This is Britta here, Sarah asked me to add her highlight of the trip, which in her sleep-deprived state she forgot to include. Sarah went to the family of the boy I tutor for dinner one night. The grandmother was concerned that Sarah, a newly-arrived American, wouldn't get enough to eat, so during the meal, she kept force-feeding Sarah lettuce dipped in sauce (the grandma's favorite dish). If she caught Sarah not personally stuffing lettuce in her face, she would grab a piece and stick in in Sarah's mouth.