December 24th

Myself and some onf the other teachers had a great Christmas dinner last night in a fairly nice restaurant on the campus of the university just next to ours. It's got waiter service and is quite upscale from the usual university eateries.

There were seventeen people all told, and a karaoke machine, so we had a hoot singing Carols and eating our fill. Ordering food here is a bit of a crap shoot, because we're never quite sure what we are ordering, and when it arrives, we're never quite sure what it is or who's ordered it. But each of us is slowly learning to ask for one or two favorites, and there is some pretty good food here if you can navigate the language. Seems like each of us has learned to order one favorite thing. So depending who shows up for the various meals we organize, we sometimes get some pretty good stuff. However there are glitches. One guy thought he was ordering some fancy prawn dish, and when it arrived it was some sort of pickled fish.... I didn't eat any of it myself. The look was a bit of a turn off.

The other teachers are a great bunch, and they make the experience worthwhile. Friday evening one of the guys, invited us all up to his place for a pretty sumptuous meal that he'd prepared. He even had gifts for us all under his tree. I brought up some dvd's so we'd have some music and something to watch on the tv if the energy started to lag a bit. (I learned from my friend Warren the value of having a dvd to watch as well as listen to) I bought a couple of Eagles dvd's last week, 90 cents each). There were snacks and drinks and lots of laughs. We had a great time.

Things here are a strange on-going mixture of frustratingly crazy and quite fascinating. If it weren't for the other Canadian teachers here, who knows how my atttitude would be, or even how many of us would still be here. But we each help each other through the wierdness.

As an example: our apartments are very nice, for China. Much better than the regular students get, by far, and even the other teachers (We are, after all, the cream of the crop... the foreign experts... I even have a special, government issued passport type book to prove it.) But in spite of the apartments looking nice, the lack of fine workmanship here is hard to believe. They don't seem to have any concept of finishing work, so things are often covered with splatters of paint, layers of caulking, etc. Things don't fit. Shelves fall down, walls move when they aren't supposed to, and the doors and windows as often as not don't close. So there are drafts everywhere.

Most of us have had leaks in our apartments of one sort or another. Several of us have had to abandon our apartments altogether, because they were unlivable. I've recently had a leak develop in my bathroom, with water coming in through the ceiling light and shorting out the electrical system.

They have a truly bizarre and distorted sense of energy conservation here. For example, they keep the hallways in the school dark, to save energy. Half the time you can't see where you're going, and navigating the stairwells is a real hazard.

They also turn the heat down or off altogether, at certain times of day, to conserve energy. This is a real joke. Because of the poor finishing work, literally half the doors and windows don't close properly, so they swing open, meaning that any heat in the buildings is lost, and they don't seem to have a clue about fixing them or display any desire to. It's truly bizarre. By the way, The couple in the photo are selling ice cream on the sidewalk.

The apartments don't have clothes dryers here. Too energy inefficient, they say. So every apartment has a 'sun room' which is all glass, in which to dry the clothes. In principle, this is a fine idea, but again, it turns into a joke, because the glass windows are not insulated and they don't close properly, so the rooms are literally freezing. I leave my beer in the "solarium" to keep it cold.

This morning I discovered that it was so cold last night that one of the bottles exploded, lreaving frozen beer foam and broken glass all over the place. I took a bucket of hot water to clean it up and as I was mopping it up, the water on the floor froze as fast as I could mop, so I now have a room that is below freezing, with a thin layer of ice over the entire floor. Not only is it hazardous, but energy wasting, because of course, any heat that might be generated in the kitchen next to it is sucked away through the glass walls of the 'sun room'. Crazy.

On the other hand, some of the cultural stuff is really interesting and beautiful. The famous Harbin ice lantern festival is happening next month. It is a big thing here and very popular in China. Apparently people come from all over to see the sculptures. I went downtown yesterday to check out what was happening and there are some sculptures scattered around some of the main squares. But the really big shew...(as Ed Sullivan would say) happens across the river in a big park where there will apparently be acres of amazing sculptures. They carve them out of blocks of clear ice and put lights inside them. I can't wait to see the festival when it opens on January 5th.

The weather here is biting cold, but with warm clothes it's bearable. We just don't go outside much. I've taken to wearing long johns all the time, even in the apartment!

Much to my surprise, I'm actually learning to get along in chinese, which blows my mind. I hadn't really intended to try to learn it. But a group of us (twelve, in all) hired a teacher from the neighbouring university to teach us some Chinese twice a week for eight weeks, and amazingly, I actually learned something. Enough, at least to 'crack the code' on this language, so that I can actually make myself understood some of the time.

The problem of course, is the listening comprehension part. When anyone speaks to me in chinese, it just sounds like a wall of sound. But ieven that is coming slowly. I imagine that by June, I'll be doing ok. Especially if I can find the right 'chinese dictionary'. You, know, the kind with the long hair and dark eyes.

We get six weeks off from late January to early March. So I'm planning to go to Shanghai and Beijing to see some friends - former students from Vancouver - and perhaps to head to the south of China for some warmer weather.