I'm finally hearing from D3 and the ASU orchestra at least a little bit. They seem to be having a wonderful time. My emails from her tend to be rather short. I am informed that less than 7 days into their trip she has already spent most of her money... But she is excited about her purchases and plans to surprise us with what she got upon her return to the states. Hopefully she is not disappointed at not being able to pick something up further into her trip - so much for carefully rationing her Chinese cash! At the end of the day it doesn't really matter, she needs to spend it there cause it sure isn't going to do her any good here... at least not yet.

She took a camera, and is a pretty good photographer, but we'll see if she remembers to snap anything. I sure hope so.

They have already had several performances, the first couple the ASU orchestra was teamed up with the orchestra from a Chinese University and they performed together. Sounds like communication with the Chinese conductor was an adventure. Somewhere along the way in the second half of their trip they are supposed to be teaming up with a traditional Chinese orchestra playing traditional Chinese instruments. I sure wish there was going to be video of that!