The weird, the sad, and the awesome.

December is here already. Wow. First off, apologies for not having pix yet, I’ve been a bit under the weather. And a bit lazy. But anyway, hoping to have everything ready before I head home for Christmas, which is only about two weeks away! So excited, but so much to do. Things have been about the same. The small children are adorable, but a bit lacking in hygiene, so I’m getting to build up my teacher immunity the hard way. I’m thinking of asking their parents to pay for my Tylenol. Just kidding. Sadly, they had a Christmas recital which I couldn’t attend because I was sick. Boo. But overall things are going well. I can form complete sentences in Chinese, perhaps not correctly, but I can order noodles to go, purchase the world’s smallest tins of vicks vapo-rub, and ask for half a kilo of beef. Of course the market ladies are all very kind and tell me how good my Chinese is. They’re lying of course, but given our initial encounters I have made substantial progress.

One of things that I’m just now getting used to about China is how quiet the motorbikes (honestly they’re more like glorified mopeds) are. In Cambodia, they were gas-guzzlers, but here most of them are electric. Most buildings have electrical outlets on their outside walls so people can plug their motos in. You might think that these quiet, battery powered machines would be much nicer to deal with than the gas-powered ones, with their revving and exhaust and whatnot. I suppose if you’re sitting in your house, that’s perfectly true. But if you’re on the street they have a way of sneaking up on you. They might be going the wrong way down the sidewalk, and if you are not looking where you are going they are liable to run into you. Another fun thing that makes Chinese traffic awesome is that they can text. In Cambodia, most phones don’t support Khmer script so most people couldn’t text. But all phones support Chinese characters. So people riding silent scooters the wrong way while texting. It makes life an adventure

Because it’s turned cold, it’s time to get out the space heaters and… cook. Many people who operate stores don’t want to go back and cook in the kitchen, it’s much more efficient just to put pots on your space heater. Thus most storefronts smell really delicious this time of year.

Ah the cold. I have missed it, apparently my lungs don’t. I really can’t complain however. At night I curl up in warm clothes under mountains of blankets with a heating pad. The construction guys working behind my house have a tent. They are most likely from more rural villages, not from the city. This makes them illegal (people can’t just decide to move, their citizenship papers are only valid in their mother’s district) so they basically have no rights. Most of them speak their local village dialects, not Mandarin which puts them at a disadvantage. Since they and they’re children are illegal (even thought they’re all Chinese citizens) they don’t have access to schools or clinics or decent housing. Another problem is their bosses can basically treat them however they want. They might promise them a certain salary, and only pay a small portion, saying the rest will come next month. Of course it doesn’t come next month, but because they are illegal, they have no recourse. Very sad stuff.

But I wanted to end on a bright note. Thus I will tell you about possibly the coolest group of people in the neighborhood. The old ladies who do tai chi. On the basketball court. With swords. That’s what I call aging gracefully. My downstairs neighbor is one of indelible gals. Tai chi starts at 8, same time I’m supposed to be at work. Clearly neither my neighbor nor I are morning people, so we often meet on the stairs, booking it to be on time. It’s so surreal to see this basket ball court, where young guys play basket ball all day, being taken over by their grandmothers. They are extremely graceful, they do their warm ups, then some of them bust out what look like smaller versions of samurai swords. Wow. My neighbor has a hard time pulling open the door to our building because it is pretty heavy, but then she just goes down to tai chi and whips out her sword. Do not judge a book by its cover my friends.