So I'm on vacation. Thank God. It couldn't have come fast enough. I made the decision to head south, back down to Guilin, where I lived when I first traveled to China in 2002.

After a wonderful trip back to the US to see my family and friends, it was back to Beijing for me yesterday - and this flight just seems to get easier and easier the more I do it.

The first few times I came to live in China, I always ended up feeling very isolated - phone cards from China to the United States are a bit expensive and hard to find here in Beijing - and in most parts of China. Consider the fact that the phone card menus are in Chinese and require you to memorize several long strings of numbers, in addition to international calling codes, and it becomes a pretty big pain calling out of China.

With my Vonage box, though, those problems are completely solved, and with the added benefit of my having a phone number that's local to the United States that rings here in Beijing. So I can give my friends my phone numbers (and a stern lecture about the meaning of a 12-hour time difference) and they can call me here in China whenever the want - for the price of a local call, which is typically free from cell phones in the United States.

The quality of the phone calls, too, is fantastic compared to the poor quality of Chinese phone cards. My parents sounded like they were right up the road when they called me last week. Typically the sound quality when calling between the U.S. and China is pretty bad, especially if you're using some of the low-cost US/China phone cards commonly available on the internet.

So what do I get versus what I pay? I got my combination wi-fi router / Vonage box for US $100. I pay a monthly fee of $20 for unlimited calling within the US, Canada and some European countries. For that price, I get the ability to remain connected with friends, family and colleagues in the United States without inconveniencing people with phone cards and dial-out numbers. I get Wi-Fi internet (for my laptop, Nintendo Wii and PDA) routed through the box, and I have the capacity to add all kinds of extra lines, fax services, and data capabilities with Vonage's flexible plans.

So in short, taking a Vonage box with you when you come to live in China, work in China or even just study in China is a great idea - it'll save you money, keep you connected with the folks back home and provide a valuable piece of technological infrastructure - you just can't underestimate the value of wireless internet!

For an American like me, it feels strange to be given a week-long holiday just a month or so after you've actually started classes. But you can't argue that October 1st is the day in 1949 that this country became the country that it is now, so we can't move it.

More and more, National Day is becoming the "touristy" vacation for Chinese folks. The weather's pretty good around the country in October and Chinese people have more and more disposable income lately. This translates directly into increased demand on China's already stretched travel industry.

Anyway, everybody else got out of town to travel and I stuck around with my old college friends Jeff and Dan. It was good times, mostly watching the new Battlestar Galactica, which I think is one of the best shows on television.

I didn't just geek out, though - on Saturday I went and spent most of the afternoon, five or six hours, with my landlord and her husband. My landlord's a nice lady in her fifties who rents a couple of units to foreigners here in my building. Her daughter, now twenty-two years old, has been living in France since she was sixteen, so my landlord has a lot of sympathy for foreigners. She invited me over to learn to make Jiaozi (dumplings) and hang out at her place, sort of like a surrogate family while mine's overseas.

Anyway, it was great times - this ancient woman with one tooth came by, poked her head into the hutong apartment my landlord shares with her husband, and asked, "What are you doing?"

"Teaching the foreigners to make Jiaozi," replied my landlady.

"I'll show them my special style," said the old woman. "Look, foreigner, you do it like this." She demonstrated a more complex fold than the one my landlady had shown me.

"Thanks, old woman," I said, trying it out on a dumpling of my own. It looked pretty good and the old toothless lady told me so before slipping out with a quick "I'm going," and disappearing into the hutong.

Later I wound up having political discussions with her husband (we both agree that Taiwan should be a province of China, and that Bush totally sucks), talking to her daughter on the phone (I'm helping her find an Aeronautical Engineering internship) and drinking lots of beer (lots). It was, frankly speaking, totally awesome.

Unfortunately I didn't get to see my girlfriend during the vacation - Yoyo went off to Korea to see her parents, which is nice, but I didn't feel like my Chinese was good enough to come along and meet them. I really want to impress them the first time we meet, and not with how bad my Chinese is. Next vacation, I'm going over there though - spring vacation.

But alas, this Chinese National Day holiday has come to a close, and it's time for me to get back to work - or something approximating it.

I did get up a new section of the website - I'm indexing every Chinese university that offers degree programs taught in English, since I couldn't find a site that did that when I was looking for schools last summer. It's up at http://www.bonochromatic.com/schools/ and I'm adding new schools to it every day - about halfway through the list already.