Long time coming

I know, I know, you want to know if i'm still alive, and haven't died from a nasty bout of chickenflu (H7N9). Let's start with the big news stories I've been hearing about from within China.

1: First and foremost, the bombs in Boston. Mst rcent news I've heard is a bit bloody, but here's the link ( http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-75509677/ ) sorry about that length, I can't do nifty hypertext links from my Ipad. Anyway, looks like they havean ideawho did it now, and will soon have it wrapped up. More importantly, my wonderful sister, Sara, my brother in law, Matt (also wonderful) and my nephew Asher (cute) were unharmed.

2: Bird Flu returns to stalk the streets of Cina, striking fear into the hearts of everyman. Sort of. KFC may be taking a massive hit in sales, but the outbreak itself is small. From what I can gather the disease most dangerous in live fowl-markets, something I've only witnessed in person once, while I was in ChongQing 重庆 (choh-ng chee-ng). The World Health Organization (WHO) says chicken that is cooked at a temperature above- I just went looking and can't find the page anymore... Anyway, supposedly if you cook chicken at proper temperature, it burns the virus off easily. I'll still be playing it safe for now, and keeping an eye on the WHO website. http://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/influenza_h7n9/en/

( in a totally unrelated note, I just figured out I can dictate to my ipad and it will display the correct characters if my intonation is correct.)

3: North Korea
Dunno what to say here, only that it's been on the mind, been the subject of international students discussions and I wonder what will happen.

That's the big international events front. On the more personal front, I've got midterms next week, then I'm headed to Nanjing and Shanghai for a week off. A sorely needed week. I'm starting to not want to do anything but sleep when not in class, even when I'm around my girlfriend, I just fall asleep. Studying can really take it out of you, you know?

I'll put more fun things in the next post, like ordering Mcdonalds, pizza, taking chinese medicine, buying train tickets and wTching movies in Chinese. Stay tuned.