It is Friday afternoon and Tim is expected to arrive in Shanghai around 5:30. It is very festive here with the excitement of Chinese New Year. Tomorrow is the "eve" of the NY and the beginning of the week long fireworks show. We will experience the first night of fireworks and then on Sunday we are heading the the back country of China. GuiZhou province which is in southern central China. Our tour guide sent an email this morning saying that there is a cold front expected in that area so she changed our overnight accommodations to a hotel with heat. We are thinking of this trip as a "back packing" experience so if we happen to have running water and a bed it will look very posh! I am pretty sure I don't even want to think about the food that we will be "experiencing". I am currently reading a book about this area of China. It is titled Soul Mountain. The author, Gao Xingjian won a Nobel prize in 2000. I am only 10% into the book...so far...so good.