Freedom or Lack Thereof

The word "freedom" gets tossed around but it had  renewed importance when I traveled to China on the way to Tibet in July.

We took a direct flight from San Francisco to Chengdu, China and there are two things one does there; 1. eat the amazing Sichuan food and 2. visit the pandas.

Upon arriving at our hotel, I tried to read my email, but I found out that Google (search engine, gmail etc..) doesn't work in China.  Neither does Blogger, Youtube, Twitter (no surprise).  I knew Facebook didn't work but was surprised to learn I couldn't read my emails, search, or work on my blog.  I was expecting to communicate with people working on a project but everything was stuck in gmail, including all my contacts.  So while I have a Yahoo account, I couldn't remember some of the contact emails to inform people of my Yahoo email.  In the end, I emailed some with easy to remember email addresses (thank goodness for name@gmail.com addresses!) and asked them to contact so and so to contact so and so via so and so.  

 At the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base

It's 2 am, last call and this panda has had one too many

Pandas are a sleepy, slow moving lot.  They are unbelievably cute though.

Our first monastery, Wushu Temple in Chengdu.  

So many more monasteries to come....

But first, eating street food in the Chengdu night markets:

The food in Chengdu was tremendously delicious!