Long TIme no See

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Hello from Xian!

Sorry it’s been so long since the last entry. Not much has been happening and I forgot to put anything new up. Life here is pretty normal, as normal as it can be. School is running smoothly. I still have eight 2 hour classes each week. It’s not too bad. Some of my students really want to learn and that makes it fun. The one’s that don’t usually don’t come but you always have one or two that forgot that they don’t care and end up showing up anyway. It’s all part of it though. We have our exams coming up at the beginning of January and then we have a month and a half break. It should be really fun. Were planning on heading to Beijing for some sightseeing and then who knows. It’s a little difficult to travel during this holiday because every other person in China is traveling as well.
It’s now starting to get fairly cold here. It snowed the other day on the north side of town. Not at our house though. We have our heating turned on now too. That’s nice. The heating in the winter is provided by the state so they turn an entire building on at the same time. We had some workers here hitting things with hammers (that’s apparently the only way to fix things here!) and then they tried to hit a hole in the window (also with a hammer) but we got it all sorted out. We are getting a little nervous though. Almost every person in our building moved out in the same week. Out of 24 apartments 3 of them are still occupied. We kept waiting for the school to call and tell us that there was some problem and we needed to leave immediately but it never came. The land lady still lives here with us so I guess it’s OK. We’ll see though.
It’s funny how things get done here. When the man came to fix the radiator he and I looked at it, without saying a word, for about ten minutes. Then, he hit it with a hammer that I had to lend him. After another ten minutes of silence he called his friend who was a half an hour away. At this point he walked past me to the living room and turned on the TV and started watching basketball until his friend arrived! The two of them then took turns hitting it until they were sure they had done all they could and left. About two days later they returned with the land lady just as I had left for work. The workers invested about 20 minutes of banging with the hammers and then left sans land lady. She continued to walk around the house with Erin pointing at things and helping her with her Chinese for about 4 hours. It was very sweet of her but Erin was exhausted! The woman also saw that we are trying to learn characters so she thought that Erin could only write in Chinese. The last two hours were spent over a sheet of paper covered in the equivalent of cursive Chinese characters! Confusing even to a native! But, after all of that our heat now works and we still talk with the land lady whenever we see her. She’s a very good friend to have here!
Artemis is getting very big now. Well…big for a really little dog. She’s almost the size of a real puppy. Luckily for us she’s started to settle down as well. We took her out for a walk one of the first days when it was cold and we quickly realized that we would have to get her something that we had spent months laughing at the dogs here for. A doggie jacket. NOOOO! It’s a sad sight to see her in it. She hates it too. I think I may have even heard another dog laughing at her. I keep hoping that she will get used to the cold and we won’t have to make her wear it but it doesn’t seem to be happening that way. The other problem is that over here you can’t get a respectable dog jacket either (if there is such a thing). She has two, the first is a miniature version of a traditional Chinese robe, the second, a tiger outfit. She’s still cute though.
For our Christmas holiday we were given one day off. They don’t really celebrate it here but from what I hear from the students it’s gaining popularity. Apparently the people use it as an excuse to go out on the town with friends. It’s impossible to get a table at any restaurant! We don’t have to worry about that though. We’ve organized a dinner with some of the other teachers. Erin and I are roasting some chickens and making most of the dinner. The others are bringing a dish or two each. In total there will be about 8 or 9 of us. It should be a good time. We’re really looking forward to it. We’re also postponing my birthday celebrations for about a month. Erin and I are going out to dinner but that’s it for now. This week alone 4 of my friends have their birthdays and some of our other friends are out of town. I think we’ll probably have a night with everyone around the middle of January or so. Not sure yet though.
Still studying Chinese too. Both of us have lessons one day a week for three hours each. Erin has hers on Monday and I have mine on Thursday. We’re learning a lot but it’s really difficult to use it. I know it sounds strange but it is. In our town alone there are two prevalent dialects: Shaanxi Mandarin, and Shaanxi hua, the local local dialect. The first is normal mandarin with an accent. The second is a horse of an entirely different color. Because Chinese only uses a few different syllables organized in different ways with different tones it makes it very confusing. In one the word for rock could mean tape or cat or wonderful in the other. You never know! The hardest is when they change between the two in mid sentence. We’re working on it though. And it’s getting easier everyday. I hope by the end of the year to be at least conversational if not better. We’ll see how it all works though.
Not much else is happening besides that. I hope all is well at home and I hope everyone is having a good holiday season.
Joe

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