Thurs Aug 14 -- Censored??!!@@

We got back to our room with a little bit of time to take a nap. However, I tried again at the lobby to see if there was a way to get another room with the internet. This time, they sent up a couple of young men who actually seemed to know something about technology. They brought in some network adapters, did some configurations changes to my computer, and magic – I had internet! I was so excited. The first thing I did was see if I could get onto my blog to start updating my blog. No problem – it worked. I didn’t know if it would really work in here – plus the press had said that foreigners would be monitored and some sites blocked – so for all I knew, the blogging sites were blocked. But it worked fine. I decided to put on the first day’s worth of activities because I had been saving everything in a Microsoft Word document. I figured out how to download my photos to my PC and successfully published my first day’s worth of activities. It wasn’t probably more than 15 minutes past my first post, when I was ready to post my second day’s worth of activities. Suddenly, the blog didn’t work. I couldn’t log on. I tried for an hour. The Internet was still working. I was still able to get on all of my other normal sites – but the minute I would try to get onto my blog, it immediately wasn’t available. It wasn’t a timing issue, because I would have been able to tell if there was a timing problem. It was just simply blocked. I can’t know for 100% sure, but I think China just blocked my blogging site. Imagine that – and my first post was pretty positive. I’ll keep trying, but that says something…..