I guess spring is over‏

Hi,

Most people in this part of China claim that there are only two seasons; summer and winter. I believe them. If you go back to last October I sent an email wondering where autumn went. We went from the 20's to snow in a very short time. Well, it is happening again. A week ago Tuesday was one of our colder days when you count wind chill. Today it reached 31oC. Spring lasted about 4 days!

I took my bike out today for the first time since October. I rode it to buy some food. It is very windy. I was ok going but I had to walk it most of the way back. My parcel carrier was full and it was heavy going into the wind. THat's ok. It felt good to get out on it again. I really enjoy riding around on it.

This term is turning out to be fun. I am enjoying more than I have the previous four terms that I taught in China. I was dreading the Oral English but now I look forward to going to class and I am usually surprised when the bell goes to tell us that it is over. They have canceled some of my classes but I wouldn't mind teaching some more of them. There is one class that will be bothersome. There are 37 in it which is large for Oral English and there are about 10 that wouldn't do their work in English during our first class. I will come up with some means to get them involved. Some students take this course only because they need to take some electives and they figure that they don't have to do much in Oral English. I will surprise them. If they don't want to cooperate then I will work them twice as hard as the other classes. One of the students from the class, Penny, is coming for supper tomorrow night. I met her last term when she wasn't my student. She will be writing her IELTS exam soon as needs to practice some speaking.

On Tuesday, Krista (Ling) is coming for lunch and we will make dumplings. I had some students here last year trying to show me how to make them. They don't make them from scratch. They buy the dough and then roll it out and cut it into the right sizes. They also buy the fillings and then put some inside and close it up. They are shaped much like turnovers. It was easy to tell which ones I had rolled! She said we should invite some others over; so between us we will ask another 3. I only have 5 chairs.

Well, it is nice to see the end of winter. It was unusually long here this year. Quite a difference from winter in Changzhou. But we are about 3 hours farther north so it might be like Halifax and Mirimachi.

Talk to you later.

Don