Re-Entry

It's good to be home, but my head is still partly in Asia. I dream of exotic places and traveling with a large group of people. A huge tour bus is always a fixture in these dreams, and there's often something odd about it (one time it was full of water, and the seats were floating inflatable pool chairs). And several times I've seen someone on the street here in Richmond and thought it was someone from the tour group.

Have, unfortunately, picked up some kind of bacterial infection (the severe abdominal pain kind, not the vomiting kind, and not the SARS kind, either), which manifested itself over the weekend. Am on some wicked antibiotics and feeling better. My main complaint right now is that I haven't been to a restaurant since I got back, and I've been SO looking forward to being able to read every word on a restaurant menu again!

Blogger is having a technical problem and images are not uploading properly. After several tries, this is the only one I got up so far:




Sunset from the plane window.









Still want to post on my exploration of the Imperial Palace Gardens, right across the street from our hotel, on my last morning in Tokyo, but that will have to wait. In the meantime and for the record, here is my pitiful bird list:

Common Myna (saw this one all over southeast Asia)
Olive Backed Sunbird (Singapore)
Spot Billed Duck (in the pond at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo)
Mute Swan (ditto)
Great Cormorant (ditto)
Common Raven (ditto)
Black Kite (saw this many times in Hong Kong and Shanghai, apparently it has adapted well to big cities)
Cattle Egret (many sightings in southeast Asia)
Oriental Magpie (Hong Kong)
Red Billed Blue Magpie (Hong Kong)
Rock Dove (can't have a big city without pigeons)