That time of year

These are the days when the first thing I see in the morning is my own breath in front of my face, the days when the rising sun has to chase the frost from the fields and the days when the cocoon of warmth comes into its own. The cocoon is something that we really codefied last year during the cold days before the spring festival vacation and I'm happy to say it has made its much-appreciated return. To understand the cocoon, you need to understand a little bit about the Hunanese winter. Despite the fact that we sit about as far north as Tampa, Florida, Hunan is continental enough to have a serious winter, unmitigated by any fortuitous weather patterns. However, to the Chinese who often see so many things as divided between north and south, we're also apparently not far enough north to qualify for heat in most of the buildings. The summers here are stifiling, and this in combination with some unfortunate facts regarding the minimization of construction costs means that just about every building here is an uninsulated, uncarpeted concrete box. To compound this, the students at my school have been taught to believe that closing the windows of their classroom would lead to the creation of some sort of stultifying miasma that would prevent them from learning anything. Accordingly, most of my classes are now taking place with the students shivering as a cold wind blows through the room. One of my boys named Pass, has taken it as his responsibility to ensure air quality for class 16 and I have on several occasions seen him both instructing the others to open more windows as well as personally fanning cold air into the classroom by repeatedly opening and closing windows and doors. This means that although the lows aren't really that low compared to most other places I've lived, just about everywhere you go here in the winter is the same cold temperature.
In terms of solutions, a couple of the offices have standing heaters and accordingly alot of teachers seem to spend more time in the office in the winter. Also quite popular are foot heaters which consists either of an electric coil or a mound of burning coal placed in ceramic dish and then covered by a wooden box and blankets which everyone then crowds around and sticks their legs under. It really is a marvellous invention and its a pleasure to eat dinner with one of these beneath your table, but some of you might have guessed that perhaps a device such as this might present a few safety hazards and you're right. While we here at TJB have escaped thus far, at Yi Zhong (Number One Middle School of Liuyang) two seperate box blazes have led to the posting of several big yellow "NO BURNING" signs all over campus. At Er Zhong in nearby Da Yao, where my friend teaches, a fire lit by a student trying to keep warm led to an unfortunate meeting with the headmaster and his parents. While I have a footbox (with which I am very, very, careful), I count myself lucky to have an alternative for the coldest of times, which brings us back to the cocoon. Unlike many of the teacher and all of the students, I have in my home a hot water heater which enables me to take hot showers at any time of day (assuming we've got power) and it is there that the cocoon begins, with a long hot shower, until just before the water runs out. Then, a quick towel off, throw on the long underwear and sprint around the corner and down the hall to my bed. The cocoon is then created by sealing myself into a single position (sometimes with a water bottle) and letting the residual heat from the shower warm the bed. It's unquestionable the warmest I am all day, and without this fine cocoon, there would be a colder man sitting here before the computer. Hmm... I guess when you look at it that way, it's not really a big deal, but in Hunan, life is all about such little pleasures so just let me have my moment.

communication 101

Well, as bad as I am at blogging, we can all take comfort in the knowledge that in fact that I am actually worse at many things. Last week that thing was text messaging in Chinese. Now, I can't really write very well, but using a computer or phone I can often get by by typing in the sounds of the words I can speak and picking the correct character out of a group. Often this is a decent way to communicate 'cause I get enough time to understand everything that's being said. However, sometimes this whole process can go awry, as in the case of homophones... Last week I was talking (texting) with a friend about the weather and wanted to say something along the lines of "I hope you're comfortable" which sounds something like wo xi wan ni hen shu fu (wo xiang ni hen shu fu might also be ok), unfortunately thanks to a combination of couple of wrong characters (even though they are spoken the same) I ended up with a sentence meaning "I miss you, uncle" and uncle here meaning either father's younger brother or, in slang, an older man taking care of a younger woman in any variety of ways. So, even if this post was rambling, unintelligible, and used way too many parentheses and commas, at least I didn't accidently hit on you and suggest that "I'm your daddy".