No more Facebook!

These are exciting times in China! The Fulbright History/Arts group arrived in Xi'an at our hotel today and we will overlap here for a few days, and it was then that we learned that 3 of their group members had experienced the 7 day quarantine process in Beijing because they had been seated near a person with an elevated temperature on their flight. From what we heard second hand, it was a long difficult week in a room with no air conditioning and sub-standard food. Fortunately those group members were able to stay behind in Beijing for a couple of days to see some of the amazing sights that we saw while we were there. The other issue that I am sure many of you are aware is the protests and current violence in Western China. This is not affecting our visit to Xi'an other than the fact that we noticed an increased police presence last night when visiting the downtown area. We were questioned for our passports while sitting outside and none of us were
carrying them on us because they had alerted us to the fact that there is a higher rate of theft here. They took our hotel information and called the hotel to confirm this and thankfully there were no issues! We also rode the city bus last night from our hotel to downtown so we were able to fully experience the "non-Disney version of China" as a friend of mine likes to say. The other noticeable effect is that Facebook was blocked beginning last night and now none of us are able to access it. The ironic thing is that Facebook isn't a very popular website in China but somehow it got added to the list of the other social networking sites that have been recently blocked. I am disappointed because I know many of you have also been looking at my pictures on Facebook so now we will have to wait until I arrive in Hong Kong on the 18th when I will escape the Great Firewall of China that is the internet. Many of you also know that I am already using a dummy
email to post my blog since the Blogger site is also on the list of blocked websites. All of this has definitely made this even more of a learning experience. Not to worry, we are all safe and still having a wonderful time!