I dined on the faces of animals in Hong Kong.

The title is the hook. We’ll get to the whole “I feasted on animal faces or parts of animal faces” later. That’s just good marketing right there. For now, just know that they were delicious.

My time in Hong Kong started with a shuttle to the hotel. And I was awestruck. Hong Kong is not only massive but incredibly urban. The biggest city I have ever been to is Toronto and it never affected me like Hong Kong did on that first night. My vision was filled by mountainous, hilly islands connected by a multitude of bridges with towering buildings illuminating the light sky. It was a magnificent sight after hours in a dark, metal tube.

I slept two hours in the last twenty-four.

Five hours ago I was soaring over the edge of Alaska and on the brink of busting out of North America and into the world. I wrote up a blog post then about what I had learned after a cancelled flight and seven hours in a flying tube. Now, five hours later, I’m sitting in a Japanese airport and realizing that my propensity for rambling prevents me from being satisfied with what was already written. [I’m actually posting this from Hong Kong, I was about to post it in Narita but realized my flight was boarding!]

This is what I’ve already learned after my flight on the 28^th got cancelled and I survived the trek from Indianapolis to Atlanta to Tokyo-Narita.

This blog is illegal in China. So...

Allow me to introduce my ghost writers.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about how Google is not exactly best friends with China anymore and I was worried about accessing my email. The good news is that my email should usually be accessible (I got a Yahoo account as a back-up) but the bad news is that I forgot Blogger (our lovely host at this very moment) is blocked in China.

As Scooby Doo would say, “Ruh-roh, Shaggy."

Why I really want to go to China.

The main reason I’m going to China is because I want to get out of here. I need to get out of here. Here being the United States. I teach World History so I need to see the world. I don’t believe I can truly impart meaningful knowledge or offer significantly diverse perspectives without experiences like the one I’m about to have in China. The Fulbright GPA I’m participating in is focused on this idea of inter-cultural interactions shaping how we teach afterwards.

But everything I just said feels obvious to me. This desire to go abroad and have unique experiences has been gestating in my soul for the last two years. That’s why I thought I should whip up a list of other reasons why I want to go to China.

I want to be Batman when I grow up.

I’ve been struggling for quite some time to get inspired and update this blog. Granted, it has only been six months so I don’t think anyone can really be too upset with me for failing on such an epic scale. But I just didn’t feel like I could live up to my original goals. I never felt that I had anything to add when there are already so many great blogs run by thoughtful educators.

I really wanted to start writing again because I’m going to China in less than a week and this will be the best way for me to record my travels and to communicate with the folks at home that I haven’t been shot in the head for crimes against crimes against humanity. But even then, the idea of writing an “I’m going to China in one week” post didn’t sit right with me either.

There must be a way of going about this that can make me passionate about writing again. Once upon a time, I kept a blog where I used fake names for my friends - because the Internet was dangerous before lolcats - and whined about how hard it was to be male, middle class, and white. So I’ll do something honest instead of pretending I’m going to be the next big thing in the teacher blogosphere or writing cookie cutter posts.

And if I’m really being honest then I have to ask myself, “What would Batman do?”

On failed attempts at commenting.

I was so thrilled with the responses to my previous post that I immediately devoted myself to replying. And then the comment wouldn't post. So I tried several different approaches in order to make it work. And then I realized that it was never going to post no matter what I did. So I have decided to reply with a new blog post and to change the obviously broken mechanism which formerly controlled commenting. Pardon my dust as I work out some of the bugs with this new blog.

For future reference, my problems seem to stem from using Mozilla Firefox on my Mac. When I tried to comment using Safari it worked. Not sure why this is the case but, as I discuss in this post, I have adopted a new system that should hopefully prevent any futher issues.

Thank you all for your comments!

This post is significantly longer than 140 characters.

A fascinating vision for teaching a Chinese history class. An engaging video, reminiscent of "Did You Know," that explores the future of the Internet. An article I might have missed about the learning curve for search engines.

You say, "Great resources, Brock! You're probably the best friend I've ever had and you make excellent bean dip."

I say, "I am indebted to cburell, web20classroom, and tomwhitby for those resources. However, I do have a killer repertoire of bean dips."

I'm struggling to think of a gripping way to introduce the fact that I just listed people I am following on Twitter and that they are responsible for introducing me to those resources.

Actually, that statement establishes my point well enough. Now let me explain what my recent experiences with Twitter have led me to conclude: anyone with a connection to the Internet and the drive to become a truly great eduator needs to be on Twitter.