Another week gone by

This past week I have had a cold and have been really draggy. It makes it hard to get things done and there is a lot to be done in the next two weeks. When I get my exams prepared I will feel better.

Last Sunday evening we did English corner again. The group is getting smaller - probably because it is getting closer to exam time. When we do English corner we leave our apartment at 4:30 p.m. and don't get back to this campus until 10:00 p.m. and the next morning I have 8:00 am classes and have to catch the bus to the other campus at 7:00 am.

We hope to get our Christmas tree and decorations up today or tomorrow. So far all we have is a decoration on the front door.

A word of advice to anyone who comes to China - don't bring envelopes or try to buy them in the stores here. We had some letters to send home and Bob finally found some envelopes in a store. We addressed the envelopes and got them ready to mail and I took them to the campus post office. The lady wouldn't sell me stamps and wanted me to buy stamped envelopes. The stamped envelopes are .5 yuan cheaper than the stamps. I didn't want to rewrite the addresses and said I wanted stamps anyway. Well she didn't have that many stamps so I had to go to another post office and got the same spiel about stamped envelopes. This clerk was willing to help me readdress the envelopes, but finally gave in and put the envelopes I had through a machine. Now we know why they don't sell envelopes in the store.

On Friday evening they turned the heat off in our building so they could check the gas. The heat came on next day but we were all day without hot water. It was good to get the hot water back on.

The weather has been very changeable lately. It was 20 degrees C. on Wednesday afternoon, but during the night it gets down to 2 or 3 C. above. It is hard to decide what coat to wear when you leave in the early morning.

December 13th was the anniversary of the 1937 Nanjing massacre and the sirens sounded for 10 minutes at 10:00 a.m to remember those who died in the massacre. Bob didn't know this was coming and he was somewhat alarmed when the sirens started.

They don't plant flowers in the flower beds. They put out pots of flowers in the beds and they look like flower beds. This week they have changed from the red and yellow flowers that have been up for the last couple of months. There are now flowers that look like cabbage and cauliflower plants. They are really very pretty and have frilly leaves.