Life update

I've been amazed at the weather. We were told that July and August were going to be hot and humid. September and October would be really nice and pleasant and then the weather would turn cold. Based on my experience living in Virginia, I expected the hot and humid to last much longer than just August, but on September 1 the humidity disappeared. On October 1 the temperature dropped probably 10 degrees (think Fahrenheit) to the 70s. On October 3 the clouds cleared and we saw a clear blue sunny sky for the first time in 6 weeks. Prior to that we'd see the sun once in a while throughout the day and only for a few minutes, but it was basically just cloudy, overcast and lots of air pollution. We're not 100% sure what to expect for winter. I've heard it feels very cold because the air is very damp and humid. The temperatures I gather are around freezing, it doesn't actually snow (and if it does, EVERYTHING grinds to a halt - in fact when it did snow, they thought that if they sprayed the streets with water that would help get rid of the snow - hehehe), but the humidity makes you feel cold all the time. There's a Chinese woman who spent some time in Canada and a Swedish woman I met on the trip to Lily Island and both told me independently of each other, that the winters here are colder than in those countries respectively. The winter sounds similar to that of Virginia, but the difference is that back home we have the shelter of our cars and we don't actually spend a lot of time outside! Needless to say, I'm worried and Aaron can't wait!

We're doing well. Aaron had a one week vacation at the beginning of October for the Chinese National Day on October 1 (celebrating 60 years) and then the Mid Autumn festival celebration on October 3. Everything mostly shut down until October 8. We thought about traveling, but when the Chinese have holiday everyone travels, so trains, planes, hotels, etc are just booked solid. So we decided to stay in Suzhou, do some touristy things here and go to Shanghai for a couple of days. We learned how to buy train tickets and out of town bus tickets, both of which involve charades. We also found some cool walking areas in Suzhou. We liked Shanghai. It's a city and it feels like it. We live in a city (6 million people), but it doesn't feel like a city. We haven't done a whole lot in Shanghai because we expect to go back frequently. We went to the Yuyuan gardens and the Shanghai museum (thanks for the recommendation Natalia and Roman). We also wandered around the fish, insect, animal and plant market, the "antiques" market, which maybe had one or two antiques years ago, but now just has a lot of items made recently in the local factory (ie: junk). Our favorite is the way the sales person insists it's from the Ming dynasty - sure it is, that's why you have 50 of them! We also came across a market for everyday goods, it had clocks, shoes, purses, clothes, electronics and so much else. This is where we bought Aaron a new beard trimmer. We got it for 130RMB, which is about $20. We could have bargained harder, but Aaron felt bad and all the other ones that we had found in stores were 300RMB. So now he doesn't look like a mountain man anymore!

Other than that things are going well. I've been substitute teaching a bit at Aaron's school and have 4 more days lined up next week because the principal has to go to a conference. I also started Chinese class this week, which I'm really excited about. In mid-November Aaron has a conference in Shenzen, which is located in mainland China right across from Hong Kong. So we're going to go a couple of days early so we can check out Hong Kong.

A note to those of you who were wondering: I don't know if I made it on TV because we haven't paid for television. We have a tv set, but it just acts as a monitor for dvds.