Winter is truly here

Happy Winter everybody!

It has been a wonderful and cold weekend. It is now Sunday night and I don't know where the whole weekend went!

On Saturday morning I finally got to read for leisure for a couple of hours. Later I also got to talk to some lovely family members on the best invention--Skype. Then Rachael and I went to Wal-mart on the 231 bus, which is always a fun excursion. Nothing notable happened, which was sort of a nice change.

We were walking by a tall apartment building that was under construction in the afternoon. There were workers up on the 8th floor, who yelled at us "HELLO! HELLO!" This usually happens when we walk by people on the street, but I was pretty amazed at the workers who were a million feet in the air and had spotted the top of the foreigners' heads. I couldn't help but look up and wave at the smiling workers looking down at us.

Then last night the girls on our team celebrated Jodi's 23rd birthday with another meal of... Chinese food! Then we watched "Air Force One" with Harrison Ford, and had a great time. It was such a suspenseful movie, but we were laughing the entire time. It was such a nice night!

This morning we did not have fellowship, but Rachael and I decided we still wanted to go downtown to Ba Yi Square to wander around. We thought that because it was freezing cold and extremely windy, the buses wouldn't be crowded. But, nope, nobody was deterred. The Chinese are never deterred by anything. Everything was just as crowded as usual. Several buses went by without stopping. So a senior student started chatting with us and it was pretty pleasant. Usually the Chinese are so friendly, so you never feel alone or hung out to dry. On the contrary, sometimes the attention can be suffocating. But today it was welcome.

We went to the post office, the eye doctor for contact solution, a DVD shop, and other random shops. The majority of shops in Nanchang aren't very interesting. About every third shop is a copy shop. Another third sells MP3 players and computer parts. The rest are either restaurants or parts for bicycles and mopeds.

It is also fun to go downtown, because once and a while you spot another foreigner, and usually we know them or have seen them before. In the DVD shop we saw a guy from fellowship. Then at a bus stop we saw another older foreign guy we had seen on another university campus. He pretended he didn't see us. That's how some of the foreigners are. They obviously see you, but they like to be by themselves like a Lone Ranger. Sometimes they also seem peeved that they aren't the only exotic foreigner in the city. I, however, love to talk to the rare foreigner, because it's like finding an endangered bird or species of animal.

Tonight we had a dinner and Christmas service with our fellowship at one of the university's downtown, just like for Thanksgiving. It's wonderful to meet with other Americans, Germans, Africans, Australians, Philippinos, Indians, etc. who are also brothers and sisters in Him.

At 8:30 we took the bus home in the bitter cold. It is the coldest it has been yet. It is 30 degrees, with the wind chill much lower. That's pretty cold for Nanchang, especially when there isn't any heat in most buildings. Today when Rachael and I were trying to cook, the propane on the stove kept going out because of the wind steadily blowing through our very drafty apartment.

Tonight it's supposed to be about 20 degrees. I worry about my students, because they don't have any heat in their breezy dorms. At least I have a little heater in my bedroom, which is more than most people in this city or university have.

So in honor of the first day of winter, I will share a text message one of my students sent me: "Today is the winter solstice. we usually eat dumpling in china. otherwise your ear will be frostbited. so please remember eat dumpling. hope you have a good weekend. :)"

Oh, no, I hope I can sleep tonight, knowing that I didn't eat a dumpling today. Hopefully I won't wake up with a "frostbited" ear.

Have a great Sunday!