One day left. I finally took the maglev back from the airport. I got on and...well...it's a train. A fast train. I mean, a really fast train...but it's still a train. It takes you from point A to point B -- quickly. Except this one cost like a jillion dollars to build. Not kwai, dollars. That's a lot of rice just to say you rode a maglev.

Should I sit around and relax after such an arduous trek to the skies of Huang Shan? Of course not! That night I ended up dancing with a Singaporean girl to Spanish music played by a Filipino band at a German bar.....in Shanghai.....China. Lots of fun, even if the Chinese girls in lederhosen threw me for a loop everytime they walked by. I tried to picture the St. Pauli Girl as Chinese, but something was always missing.....

The next morning I did some last-minute shopping in the street market off Nanjing Lu before catching my late morning flight to Beijing, Chicago and home to D.C. My pack didn't make the connecting flight in Chicago, and I ended up waiting at the dreadfully boring Dulles airport 'til midnight, two hours after I should have been on my way home. Just when I was starting recognize that the fantastic trip was over and was looking forward to crashing in my own bed for the first time in a month, the adventure refused to end, as if sucking every last drop out of the experience.

I finally got home Sunday at 1:30am.

I fell asleep at 5, dreaming of China.