let me let you in on a little secret: i love taking photos of unsuspecting people, particularly when they're going about their everyday business. i used to be a master of this but i've sort of gotten bored with it recently. but now with the weather warming up (today was the hottest day of the year thus far) and people are everywhere, i was motivated to go out and get some snapshots. my first stop was harvard square, where i was cashing a check. while wandering around, i came across the new globe corner bookstore, now relocated on 90 mt.auburn street. for anyone doing any sort of traveling, this is THE store to visit, with all sorts of guides and maps and phrase books. i talked with a woman there who's 16-year old daughter was going to study abroad in china for a semester in the fall. as for myself, i purchased two essential maps of china (one china whole, the other just southern china).

harvard square:

charles river (boston):

if you were in boston today you would've seen the army of girls walking around with their beach towel and their bag of tanning accoutrements (music, sunblock, magazine) looking for the perfect spot to get some vitamin D. it almost makes me regret not being here for half the summer.

newbury street:

while getting some early dinner at the cafe (beef noodle soup), i talked with one of the regular customers (casey was his name) who asked if i was going to china because i had one of the maps spread out over a table. he spoke quite a bit of chinese and some taiwanese phrases as well, having spent a lot of time in taipei as part of his engineering work. he'd just been to burma a few months ago, and took out his 4gb ipod mini to show me his awesome photos. this guy was way interesting: in college he learned arabic and spent some time in a moroccan jail for hitchhiking. he told me exchange rate in burma has gone up (1150 kyat to the dollar, when i was there it 900 kyat) and that china might be building a rail system to connect yangon with kunming. he also told me about the possibility of vacationing in north korea.