Zoiige (Ruo'ergai), July 24

We got stuck here, because we believed the Lonely Planet that to make it from Langmusi to Songpan one needs to stay overnight. Well, it turns out they changed the bus schedule so that one can take the 7am bus to Zoiige and from there the 10am or 2:30pm bus to Songpan - but we found out too late. But whatever. It was entertaining in the sense that they really don't seem to get many tourists there, let alone foreigners. In the restaurant where we had lunch they couldn't stop giggling, even after I managed to successfully communicate with them in Chinese, they just couldn't get over themselves. One waitress was so afraid of us, she refused to come to our table and would send her colleague over instead. Just after we arrived, we opened the laptop to look on a map and immediately a crowd of 10 or so people surrounded us, talking animatedly about what the laowai were doing. They were helpful, though, and pointed us to the bank. When we had lunch in a hot pot restaurant (not bad) and B. went to the bathroom, I immediately had the neighboring table crowding and interrogating me. The usual "where are you from? How old? What do you do? Married? Kids?" So much for small talk... Several people felt obliged to welcome us "to China" :) Much nicer than the usual crowd trying to sell us stuff or rip us off. There was genuine curiosity, and although I wouldn't like to be the town's curio attraction every day, it was a nice change for once.

The most exciting event was actually my second phone interview, this time in a really crappy but nevertheless horrendously pricey hotel room (walls with mold stains and a filthy bathroom for 480RMB=$80!) Again, I was quite nervous, but I got the job! So, starting November, I will be interning with Tostan in Washington DC, an organization you should totally check out, I am very excited about their ideas and approach. Maybe I should start a new blog - "Academic goes NGO" or something like that - and inspire hordes of frustrated physicists to leave research and take up non-profit work :) I can already see it - being single-handedly responsible for the downfall of string theory because they run out of (wo)manpower :-P Wouldn't that be something?