I think I might actually just be allergic to China.

So, we've been back home for about three days from our travels, and I'm still sick. This is a little distressing to me. I was sick for about the last week and a half of our trip. I'm starting to forget what it was actually like to be able to breath out of my nose, or to not wake up each morning hacking up...well, we won't go into that. When I was pondering this, I realized that I was actually quite ill at the beginning of our trip, when we met up with our friend Jen in Beijing. Then I remembered that I was sick when I was grading all of my students final examinations, before that trip. Thinking about grading those finals caused me to remember the different colds I had last semester (about 4 or 5). My new, tentative hypothesis is that I am, in fact, completely allergic to China. This is not an impossible theory, given that Tianjin has some of the highest air pollution levels of any city in the world. My new plan is to never leave my apartment. Does this seem like a plausible idea? I mean, teaching might be a little difficult, and buying food, but I figure I can use Skype to teach my students and then rig up some kind of magic tube to have food "beamed" into our kitchen. Until I get better, this is the imaginary world I will be living in. When we return to the states, I will breath in the sweet, sweet, Barak-odored air of freedom.