Well friends, I have a small piece of bad news. It seems that China's firewall blocks blogger.com, so I am unable to view my own blog. On the bright side, I can still post. What this means for practical purposes, I think, is that if you want to comment on any posts, I won't be able to read them. If I remember correctly, however, I might be able to have any comments emailed to me. However, until further notice, please send all comments to my email address, mjbortscheller@gmail.com. I have no trouble accessing that. I may in the future decide to start a new page, but don't delete your bookmarks just yet.

That business aside, after two days of travel, I have arrived in Chengdu, my home for the next two months of training. We rolled into town in a caravan of two buses and two trucks of luggage on July 4, 2005. We felt kind of like a band on tour.
Link http://www.maps-of-china.com/sichuan-s-ow.shtml
Edit: I tried to link to a map there, but I have no idea whether it worked (and I can't view my actual blog, so let me know). Regardless, Chengdu is one of the largest cities in Southwest China, located in the Sichuan province. Accounts currently differ, but I believe the population is roughly 6 million people.

Yesterday we began our first official day of PST, or Pre-Service Training. All of us are PCTs, or Peace Corps Trainees. We are not sworn in as Volunteers until the end of training. Our training consists of more country-specific PC training, language, technical and cross-cultural training. It is especially language intensive; my language class consists of five other people with roughly my level of Mandarin (read: low) and one teacher, a Chinese linguist. We had our first class yesterday, and in the space of two hours my Mandarin knowledge tripled. It will be such a challenge to learn this language, but also totally exhilerating. After our class, we all would stroll about, asking each other what our names were, saying hello and goodbye, just pleased as punch with ourselves and our newfound vocabulary. My Chinese name, by the way, is Bai Lan, with a 2nd or mid-rising tone in each word. As is customary for Chinese names, Bai is my surname and Lan is my given name, meaning essentially White Flower. Not as exotic as my classmates name Kang Jian Long, (which means Dragon Sword), but infinitely easier to pronounce.

I should also note that I am writing this at 4:30 am. I'm not quite over my jetlag, clearly. I started this message yesterday, but didn't have time to complete it. So really, it is quite convenient that I am up so early, right..?

Please email me if you are curious about specific aspects of my new Chinese life, or what lies ahead in my PC service. Continue to post comments if you like, just remember that I am unable to read them. I hope all is well with each and every one of you. More from me later!