we are in the single digits

Five days from right now, I will be in the Changsha airport, getting ready to board my flight to Beijing and start my winter vacation! I could not possibly be more ready, because as much as I love my students, I am sick of them--looking at them, talking to them, being around them, everything. I have been teaching for 20 consecutive weeks, minus one week back in October for National Day. Western universities have started and ended one semester, and started another, all in the time I've been teaching one semester. I completely understand why teachers gets breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas, because right now, I am going crazy.

I am also very cold, because it snowed yesterday (then melted) and all day today. The power was out nearly all day on Sunday, and I hadn't realized how much heat had built up in my apartment over the winter until it was all gone. I am currently wearing my thermals, a jacket, a scarf, tights, and fuzzy socks, and I'm shivering. I have to go back out in about half an hour to help with the oral exams for students trying to go abroad; I do this pretty often, but I really wish it wasn't at 8 p.m., especially when it's cold and the many stairs to campus are treacherous. Here in China, they like non-porous walking surfaces, so everything is smooth or lacquered or enamel-covered, so when it gets wet or slushy, it suddenly become ten times more dangerous. The five stairs to the guardhouse are so slippery now, it's like something out of a movie: I have to use both hands to hold the railing, while pressing my weight into the step, so my feet don't fly out and down. I have really good balance, so I feel like an old person having to hold walls and stuff to walk. The snow today is by far the prettiest we've had, though, so Amy and I went out and took pictures and made a little snowman (she is from Florida, so this much snow is very novel to her).

The Foreign Affairs Office has scheduled our last big group meeting for this Friday night at 7:30 p.m., exactly when we would have been eating a last dinner out with friends before the break. The Western concept of 'weekend' does not exist here--they have meetings, classes, and other academic events from Monday morning to Saturday night, and they expect you to be free during that window. These meetings can be a trip, because there are three teachers working exclusively with the undergraduates, five teachers with the postgraduates, and me in the middle with some of each. In Chinese culture, it's okay to have side conversations and whispers, so after 45 minutes or so the Chinese side of the table descends into chatter, while the foreign teachers are still trying to ask questions and get help. Most of our questions can't really be answered, and it appears that not much can be done with regards to our concerns, so at this point, FAO meetings are particularly pointless. Hopefully, all the other foreign teachers are as exhausted and ready for a break as I am, and they will not draw the meeting out any longer than needed with unnecessary and useless queries and comments.

This post, I now realize, is overall more negative than most of my others. Don't get me wrong, I still like China. I just need my winter break. Now, please.

my brain is in a million little pieces all over China...including places I've never been

I guess that's what happens when you're correcting papers on the hometowns of about 125 students over two weeks. Add to the mix, I have a student who had been hardcore flirting with me (according to Western dating standards) ask me advice on how he should ask out this student he likes, the students and teachers being told different weeks for the end of the semester, and the inevitable drama that comes from living with foreign teachers from all over the world; needless to say, things have been a little crazy. I will start from Christmas, which seems so long ago, and work my way up to now.

Christmas went well, and I have never been so excited to see kitchen utensils as I was when I opened the gifts from my family. It snowed on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, which was so wonderful, and I spent almost all day with the other younger teachers.

On New Year's Eve, the four of us went to a nicer Chinese restaurant (i.e. more than $5 U.S. per person) for dinner, then had drinks and snacks and played Wii right through midnight. Fireworks started going off all around when the year switched, which is not surprising at all for our neighborhood. A couple days into January, the snow started. We got an inch for sure, maybe two--just enough to cover campus in a quiet white blanket. It was beyond beautiful, and I loved walking around, seeing students and children throwing snowballs and building snowmen and snow bunnies (Year of the Rabbit starts in a month). My mind was overwhelmed remembering a year ago, working at the Chick, never thinking for a moment that in 2011, I would be in China, seeing more snow than my friends and family back home. I know I say it often, but I have been incredibly blessed. I try to remind myself everyday that TEFL and Costa Rica and China and the Chick have been such big blessings in my life over the past year. I honestly can't believe it sometimes, that this is my life, because I don't think I ever could have planned this for myself.

The snow is gone for now (supposed to start back up soon), but it is still FFFFFREEZING! It wouldn't feel so cold back home, but the lack of central heating and properly sealed walls and windows makes an enormous difference. This is pretty rare for southern China, and I read online that they have been evacuating people from the rural parts of some other nearby provinces. Some of those smaller buildings simply aren't made to handle ice and snow, and they're too dangerous for people to be around. Thankfully all the buildings here are sturdy, but I never would have thought that I would be seeing my breath in class everyday. I'm looking forward to my class in the morning, because those 32 bodies crammed in that small-ish room make for a little more warmth than normal. We have been playing Jeopardy to review material this week before they give their final presentations over the next two weeks, and they get so competitive...just like I did when I played review games in school. I have also experienced this week the frustration of having students skip my class to study for their other final exams. Seriously, they are graduate students, have they not learned by now how to study on their own time? AND, they had a long weekend because of the holiday! I have had a few apologies from students who missed after I told their classmates who attended that skippers would receive no points for that day.

I should be in bed by now, but I can never sleep before my Thursday classes (my longest teaching day), and the four-day-weekend threw off my schedule. I'm not even tired, I'll probably lay in bed, mind racing, trying to count sheep. I just finished watching the 2010 reboot of The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan, my new favorite actor, and Jaden Smith; I'll confess I've never seen the original, but this newer one was surprisingly good. That little Smith isn't too much of a ham, like other child actors, and every time I see Jackie Chan I respect him more. I also adored that it was set in China--I've never been to Beijing, but if you want to see what my journey here was and my daily life is like, that is the closest to reality. Of course, in real life it's a hundred times more crowded, and I've never seen Chinese students put the beat down on each other. Oh, and I wish Jackie Chan was our maintenance guy, then I would finally have my lights fixed! I don't know if the American version has English subtitles for the Chinese dialogue, but I was able to pick up a fair bit on my own (with only Chinese subtitles throughout). The movie really captured, to me, the bigness and grandeur of China, and I can't wait to travel more through the country and see some of the sights from the film. Great Wall, I'm coming for you this summer!

The one thing dominating my mind right now is the fact that in 18 days, I get on a plane to go home for the shortest vacation ever. Two weeks, and both weekends in different states: it will be crazy and I will eat too much and get sick (from the food and the time/climate/environment changes), but I can't wait!

"Oh, this is the start of something good, don't you agree?"