My nest. I carried the projector from Seattle for these Chinese students, but the brightly sun-lit classrooms have no curtains, so I use it to stream American media - Daily Show, Marwencol, Walking Dead - onto my large bare wall.

Too rainy again to go outside.

My doodles get more myopic each day. I'm starting to feel like Martin Sheen in the beginning of Apocalypse Now in the Saigon hotel. My "ivory tower" is a 4th floor dorm, inland China, where I spend my days drawing and scribbling in my journal to streaming radio. The cliché could only be more complete if I drank, but a 5th of vodka has sat untouched on my fridge for months (though a bag of to-be-rationed mini-Snickers disappears in one night). Will I last two more months without disappearing inside my own navel?