Baby it's cold outside....

Well, it appears that fall is already over in Wave City and winter has decided to blow on through. I want to say we had about 3 weeks of fall...and it was really wonderful while it lasted. The skies were clear, the air clean and cool, you could wear jeans and long sleeves without having to worry about being too hot or too cold. But, all the while there was this suggestion that something much more wicked would soon be coming. It started one morning while I was in class. You see, Chinese buildings are made completely out of concrete...which means there is no insulation whatsoever...which means, once it gets cold...it stays that way. One day in class I found myself sitting there freezing my buns off, wondering how it could be a comfortable 68 degrees outside, while inside it was closer to the mid-50s. The answer: winter was on the way. As of two days ago, I'm going to announce that it has officially arrived.

We enjoyed our 3 weeks of not using the air conditioners, but now we have ever heater in the house cranking, eating tons of volts every day and causing me to worry about paying for energy over the next few months. The bad thing is, if you turn the air con off, the room immediately gets cold again. Oh, and in our bedroom there's a nice 4 inch gap between the door and the floor which goes outside, meaning we have a nice sort of meat locker feel to the bedroom. This takes some getting used to. Of course, the best answer for dealing with winter in China is layers. We wear lots and lots of layers. Today I had four layers on to go to class. Grace had three on just to play in the living room. There's a popular saying in China around this time of year: Duo Chuan Dianr Yifu- "Wear more clothes." Of course, the little old ladies have been waving their fingers at Jenny for months now telling her to put more clothes on Gracie. Here's another interesting thing...if you live above the Yellow River in China you have central heat and air . The only catch is that, once the heat turns on, it's always on, regardless of what the temperature is outside. So, you could be outside in your shorts in April and still have the heat blasting inside. Below the river...winter is very hard. No heat most places. The classroom has not been a fun place to be this week...somehow the cold just gets into your bones and hovers there. I woke up this morning to rain and knew it was going to be a rough class. But, we battle on...we come up with tricks, we layer, etc. etc. I think we're going to by a portable radiator to put in the bathroom or showering is going to be a miserable affair. We already have a few extra layers on the bed, but the best heat source we've found so far is Gracie. About midnight every night she wakes up crying, demanding to be brought to our room...and Jenny and I are usually too tired to argue. Plus, that kid puts off a lot of heat. It's kind of nice cozying up together as a family on the cold cold winter nights.