How's the weather?

"It's fall."

Every day as part of my opening routine to begin class, I ask my kids "how's the weather?" They tell me, and then we sing our weather song. Kids that age like repetition, so you have no idea how excited they get about singing the same song every day. But anyway, in Beijing often the weather isn't as clear cut as it might seem. It's sunny? Sure but we can't see the sky. It's cloudy? Those aren't clouds, kids. Recently, I've simplified the matter by saying simply, "it's cold."

How cold? I don't know, I can't read Celsius. No snow though, for sure. There's a chance I won't get snow despite the cold temps--Beijing's just sort of like that.

This past Saturday it was my intention to do a "Day in the Life" sort of photo blog--taking pictures of each of the things I did during the day, but I ended up not doing enough interesting things to justify an entire post. For example, until noon the only picture would've been me sound asleep. Instead, I got some pictures of the school and the fall leaves (once I was awake) and those will hopefully give you a better look at what a day in my life is like.

Oh, by the way, the sandwich I'm eating is donkey meat. Just wanted to make sure you know, mom, that I'm getting plenty to eat :)






Explanations: The first picture is at Be For Time Teahouse, a place we've started frequenting more... frequently. You pay 18 kuai (8 kuai is a dollar) for all-you-can drink. They've got mint green soda water, tea with tapioca, caramel iced coffee, vanilla ice cream, slurpee-like things... it really is good. We took the girls there Friday night, played Uno and some made-up word games and had a blast.

Next is the bike rack on campus. Behind you can see the gray building to the left (where I live). We affectionately call it the Gray Building. The building on the right is the Mac Center (with the traditional-looking Chinese roof).

Then should be me taking a big old bite of that donkey sandwich (it really is donkey meat). I didn't like it much at all, but there's this lady that sells them outside our school gate and I figured I had to try it at some point. Kinda chewy.

Then there's a better shot of the Gray Building, taken from the Mac Center Garden. My bedroom window is all the way on the right, second from the bottom, with the air conditioning unit right below. I live on the campus of my school, so I wake up each morning to the sounds of kids playing outside and then have a quick little walk to the office.