In the Trenches

(Old campus turning into a pile of rubble).


(The hole we try not to fall into when we leave our apartment building).


(A snapshot from above).


(Poor palm trees covered in ice at new campus today).


(Our school's pagoda in ice).

Living in a "developing" country means that there is sometimes a whole lot of development going on at once, and it almost makes my head spin. I'm amazed at the rapid pace that they can throw up huge rows of apartment blocks, build gigantic roads from scratch, and create whole new communities from the dust. Streets can look entirely different from two months ago, and they can plant thousands of trees and flowers where piles of rubble just stood a few days ago. The streets are usually coated with a wonderful layer of dirt and mud from all the construction projects, and the fact there isn't any drainage. Chickens and dogs run wild through the midst of all of it. Sometimes I think this is what it must feel like to live in an Alaskan outpost during a gold rush. But, alas, it is China circa 2010.

One of the development projects has overtaken the old campus where we live. Sewage and waste water used to run through ditches in the ground which were sometimes covered in places by crumbling cement blocks. They are actually installing pipes for the waste! Apparently they are doing an upgrade in the form of dozens of construction workers yielding shovels, pickaxes, and sledgehammers. One morning they just arrived and promptly went to work digging countless mazes of trenches, turning the place into even more rubble than usual.

The workers are a sad sight. They are working in the numbing cold doing back-breaking work--all with very shabby clothes and equipment. They are probably half my size, because they are so small and lean. When they stop to stare at us foreigners, I make sure to smile kindly at them.

Our campus has never been handicapped friendly, but now it isn't really even normal person friendly. You have to climb on top of piles of rock, leap over the trenches with dirty, murky water sitting idly below, and maneuver around the workers chucking rocks and mud everywhere. Today was even more fun, because it rained last night and then promptly froze. There is a thick coat of ice on everything, which is rare for this far south in China. So at 7:30 a.m., I had to dash all the way to the front gate, trying to leap over the trenches and land on a small mountain of rubble coated in ice on the other side of each trench. Dozens of people were chipping away at the ice on the slick stairs by the buildings. Thankfully I survived this journey. And it sort of adds more spice to my day.

So it was extremely cold today for all my classes. There were lots of icicles--the bamboo and palm trees had layers of ice that looked rather strange on them. Even my eyelashes maintained a layer of frost on them in the classroom, since it was below freezing inside and outside. Most of my students had wind-burn on their faces and there was a girl in one of my classes who had chilblains so badly on all of her fingers, that they were like giant open sores.

What a winter. Thankfully He is getting us through it!