Well, the day has finally arrived.  January 29th, 2011.  One of those days you put on your calendar and watch it creep closer and closer.  For me today is the day that I leave for Yangshuo, China to teach english for six months.  I really don't know how I feel right now.  I have been cycling through a wide variety of emotions not really settling on one.  I still don't think it has fully hit me that this is happening even though I'm going to be leaving for Chicago in three and a half hours and be boarding an airplane in less than 24.  I'm sure things will become real when I sit down on the plane.

Anyways, with that aside I want to introduce my blog and state my goals that I have for it.  So my first goal with this blog is to keep my friends and family connected with what I'm doing in China.  Second, I want to use this blog help better remember what I did in China.  Third I want this to be a place where I can process what I'm feeling by being thrown headfirst into a culture different than my own, and with that to help you, my readers, understand a little more about China, and Chinese culture.

With that being said, I just want to throw out a little disclaimer.  Blogging and this whole "blogosphere" is something that I've never been a part of.  Because of this I have this little voice in the back of my head thinking that this blog is destined for failure.  I've never been able to stay on top of things like this in the past.  So a week may pass between postings and then in typical Matt Wiersum fashion I do everything the night before the deadline.  So little reminders to update the blog will be helpful.  I also would like this blog to replace me explaining what I'm doing to 20 different people over and over.  I'm not saying we can't talk on skype about China, what I'm saying is that get the basics from the blog, and we can talk about the "deets" via skype.  Finally,  there will be times in which i will start typing like this and forget that english has stuff called punctuation and these things called rules that stop you from writing a big long mess.  Did I mention that I'm a college graduate?  But for real,  there WILL be times that any sort of grammar goes out the window, so don't get upset k thx.

So. Without further ado, Welcome to my blog. ish is about to get real!