Arrivals with no invitation (Hello, Winter).

I guess that's how karma works: you complain one day, and then it doles out something much worse. I guess it's like the first day of discomfort after a hard workout or a big race... it's always worse the next day.

Well, winter if finally and resoundingly here. Currently, it's about -12 and the winds are gusting to about 30km/h. This probably drops the air temp to something more akin to -20. You prairie folk knows what this means: it's cold. For those of the more weather-weak on the west coast, you probably won't be able to fathom such nonsense. 

Yes, I understand the reality of you all being back home in Canada and it being even colder in some places. But what people take for granted is the fact that often, you're going from warm place to warm place with discomfort in between. But alas, this isn't so much the case here. In China, you travel from uncomfortably cold place to another uncomfortably cold place. As I was teaching PE today in the gym, I could see my breath and I had to wear a toque and gloves while writing down participation marks. The wind was whistling in the windows of my English classroom so badly that I had the entire south side of my class ask to move. This seems like an okay idea, until you realize that I teach in the smallest classroom on campus and unless I want to teach with all the boys sitting on each other's laps, this is simply impossible. And I wore a toque and gloves. Likewise, I've been engaged in a battle of wills with the cleaning staff to keep the doors and windows closed. Apparently, it's bad for your health to have warm air coursing through a school. I've taken it upon myself to battle this ignorance in stealth mode, by going around at every opportunity to close all open doors and windows. They may have sheer manpower, but I've got some stubbornness and an iron constitution to match it. Thus, it's on.

I don't like seeing my breath and wearing gloves while I teach English. Period.

In other news, I only have 8.5 more teaching days until Christmas, 12.5 teaching days until New Years, and only 17.5 teaching days left before my winter holiday can commence. I'm heading to Tianjin first before flying down to Kuala Lumpur, then onto Singapore, Chiang Mai and Laos and Cambodia after that. I'm pumped. I know I have to kinda buckle down in the meantime, but it's hard to focus. Not only is the apathy and laziness setting in amongst my students, but the weather is miserable and it's just a tough time of year to get motivated. I don't get any actual holidays for Christmas (well, we get off 2.5 hours early on Christmas Eve) so the push from our holiday in early October all the way through to winter break is a long one. It doesn't help that my principal is coming to do an observation with me tomorrow and I'm swamped with marking that I continue to avoid like the plague. It's all part of the job, but it just not what I look forward to after a long day.

Enough complaining, though. Time for work. One final shout-out before I hunker down... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Lots of China love!

T