Weather check

Near my house in NY:



Here in Guangzhou, China:



Next assignment in Tres Lagoas, Brazil:



Looks like we'll be skipping most of winter again! :)

Even more pics

Yes, I keep adding to my photo album. Tomorrow I'll go through and fix it up, adding captions, etc. There's even some video at the end. Sorry about the one vid being sideways -- didn't realize I couldn't turn it after I'd recorded.

// update! I moved out of picasa to YouTube and Flickr

Pics on Flickr
Vids on Youtube

More pics up!

I had to update the link because I moved stuff over to Flickr

No visa extention... yet

We went to the Exit & Entry Administration offices to try for a visa extension yesterday. We failed. Apparently, there's two ways I could do this:

1. Get a plain vanilla visa extension. I'd still be on a tourist visa, I'd still have just the one 'entry' (which I already used), and I'd have to leave 30 days after the new visa went into effect.
2. Get converted to a business visa that will allow longer stays and multiple entries. This involves a round-about tag-along wife argument and a copy of our marriage certificate.

Option 2 is what we need in the long run, but means giving the neighbors the combo to our safe, having them pull out our marriage cert, getting the cert faxed to us here at the hotel, and praying the convoluted plan works when we get back to the security officials. Right now, we're probably going to have to settle for option 1. Then give option 2 a shot at the embassy in the US next time I need to go to China.

At least I learned some things from our afternoon of Chinese Bureaucracy.

• I should always travel with a copy of our marriage certificate for occasions like this.
• If I had succeeded in getting a visa yesterday, I would have needed to leave the country on January 3rd -- so I've got to wait until after December 18 to try again.
• I should plan to go shoe shopping the day I go back to extend my visa. The opposite side of the street has at least a dozen shoe stores!

You mean I have to STAY at this luxury resort hotel...

So I'm here in China on a 30 day visa. This trip was supposed to be like 2-3 weeks. Now it looks like Billy will be here well into January. Which means:

1. I might get to spend more holidays here in China. No complaints from me. This hotel is awesome.


2. My visa will expire, and an extension will probably only get me another 30 days. The fact that even that may not be long enough is a bridge I'll cross when I get there.


3. We would probably go directly from China to Brazil for the next job. But Brazil requires an entirely different wardrobe. Clothes which are in my house in NY.

Looks like I'll be buying what I need and seeing if I can get some things (like more contact lenses) shipped. The flights Brazil would be paid for by the company, but a trip home just to change out our stuff almost certainly would not. The cheapest possible flight home from here to Albany is about $1300. We can buy or ship everything we'd need for a whole lot less than that. And I know I shouldn't be complaining about getting to go for a shopping spree. But it still seems somehow wrong.

Oh, and did I mention our hotel is around the corner from the US consulate? And they have a church there? It's totally surreal to see a Church of Christ plopped down in the middle of a Chinese city. Of course, all the tourist shops on this street sell Chrismas ornaments (including crosses) and these cool 3-D carvings of the last supper. I promise to grab some pics another day. Maybe I'll flash my passport at the Chinese guards and go through the barricade for a peek inside.