Way too long between posts, way too much to catch up on, again

OK well I'm really getting behind on this blog thing...hmm. Well the last month has been pretty hectic to say the least and has seen me travel all around the NW of China, across through central China, up to and around Beijing for a week and finally fly to Munich, Germany.  I'm writing this from my friend Chris's place in Germany unfortunately using a German keyboard with all kinds of crazy changed-around punctuation and when i try to type a Y I get a Z (why those 2 keys would be inverted in a QWERTY keyboard I have no idea - they use a QWERTZ keyboard here...odd).  To more important matters, I'm not going to have much of a chance to update things in a big way but I'll post some pics at least.  Enjoy.