I'm in St. Louis now. I meant to post last night before the beginning of our road trip, but my site was all farked up, but it seems to be fixed now.

After driving 12 hours today through Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, visiting the world's largest McDonalds, visiting a kitch souvenier shop (The Ozarkaland!).

Now we're visiting (and crashing with) Amy's old middle school friend in St. Louis who are very nice and fed us yummy food, and have a beautiful apartment.

Anyways, a smashing beginning to a new adventure, appreciating being at home with my family for a year, but very excited about the new turn in my life.

So, I'm thoroughly cleaning up my room in preparation of moving up to DC starting Monday. I came across an old Social Studies book I used in 5th grade, published in 1986. I thought I'd crack the book open because I was interested in how the book portrayed Cambodia, since this was during the Khmer Rouge era. As it turns out, out of a 502 page book about the history of the world, the whole of South-East asia was only mentioned in less than one of the pages. Yes, in a section called, "Southeast Asia - a meeting place" which took up less than a single page, they covered all of SE Asia. Cambodia got a sentence and a half: "The ruins of great Hindu temples still stand at Angkor in modern Kampuchea. Buddhism is now the main religion in Kampuchea, Burma, and Thailand."

In contrast, the USSR got 45 pages, and the Middle East got its own chapter with a section on each country.