new adventures

So I am traveling/exploring Shanghai this summer, starting in July. Woo-hoo.

Yet another road less (but increasingly often--especially with the Olympics in Beijing this summer) traveled..



From countless trips to local bookstores' travel sections to endless talks and e-mails with prospective subletters, world travelers, ex-pat friends, friends of now-my-virtual-friends, and fellow architects, Professors, and colleagues that continue to bounce back and forth between the West, the East, and its middle, I have begun my endless pursuit of strategizing how to make the most of 2 months in a country that remains as abstract and distant to me as the notion of a $3 cab ride... (which, I've been informed, is the going rate from the French concession to city-center...)

Thus far I've booked my flight, secured a place to stay, and established several connections with fellow Americans now living there.

I've also amassed a tall stack of architectural journals and magazines addressing "ubiquitous china" (i.e. Volume, issue 8), National Geographic (May 2008, "Entering the Dragon") and a bunch of clippings about the Ordos 100 going-ons in Mongolia, courtesy of Herzog + de Meuron and my beloved artist and one-man-think-tank, Ai Wei Wei (he is brilliant--just look at his Han Dynasty urn with Coca-Cola logo!)

Next steps include obtaining a visa and learning Mandarin.. so far my first lesson with a former student was both intimidating and exciting, and I'm looking forward to my next one with a Syracuse professor.. keep checking for updates!