Language.....
I wish I had brought my Hebrew study books. ulpan would be easier with familiar study aids like my visual hebrew/english dictionary and my hebrew verb dictionary. It is always to your advantage to have a basic knowledge of the language of the place you plan to visit.

Food...
Why didn't I bring my chinese cooking equipment!?!?!?
WIth a wok and steamer you can go without most other cooking equipment. Everyone knows about wok stir frying, but you can also do the following.
Steam bake: cook fish, meat and even breads they will not brown but a quick fry will brown the meats.
Deep fry: simple just use more oil

A nice recipe for a quick shabbat dinner
Coke chicken:
1 - cut up or not frozen chicken
1- can coke
1- onion
garlic
pepper, soy sauce, and other spices as you like

Chop up onions dump spices and coke onto chicken. Carefuly flip and turn chicken frozen or not in the wok until it thaws, cut up and turn untill all skin has browned. Serve!!

While the coke is boiling you can have a bamboo steamer on top to steam veggies or other parts of the dinner. Steamer can be stacked four tall or higher. If you are still steaming and the coke runs low add water or more coke.

My basic list of handy chinese cooking equipment.
Cleavers heavy and normal
wok with lid
wok shovel (spatula scoop)
wok steamer bamboo stackable
fry dipper
cutting board

Laptop blues:
It seems that my laptop is failing, every few hours of use it dies, I think it may be a power supply problem and I intend to repair it once again. I hope that I stll have enough money in the US to buy a new laptop.
  ¶ 9:49 AM