A Hazy Shade of Winter

I get it now. When Josh, who went to high school with me and lives in Beijing, talked about "blue sky days," I wasn't really sure what he meant, but now I get it. Changzhou is just under some sort of permanent haze. At first I thought it was just the weather, too rainy, too cloudy, and such, but I can see now that it's just always sort of hazy. From my 14th floor window the distance just disappears into a shade of white. It's not like it's hard to breath the air or anything, or even that you really notice it on a day to day basis, but there's just this permanent shade of white that surrounds the edges of everything. It gives this oddly tactile sense of what the growth is like. It's not just bug buildings and new cities, its a sort of thing that hangs in the air, like being really close to a construction site all the time. China is under construction.

We finally got our class assignments today. I got all freshmen, which I didn't really want since it means their English won't be so great. Teaching freshmen though means that I don't actually start teaching until the week of the 22nd. Which means that I have essentially nothing to do for the next two weeks. I guess I'll try to go to Shanghai and maybe Nanjing at some point, but it's just weird. It means that it will basically be a month from when I entered China before my first class. I didn't exactly come here to work but I'd like to be doing something, especially so early when I don't have a good sense of things yet. If it as later in the term I would feel more comfortable traveling around but I'm not really sure what to do so early.

My stomach is also still feeling a little off, though I did find what are basically Saltine crackers. Actually the crackers are sesame and much better then Saltines. I'm going to try and get some cheese and peanut butter from Wal-Mart. For those of you keeping score I'm up to $4.90 from Adsense so I'm basically rich now. More pictures are up, but I'm going to stop mentioning that since I'm putting at least some up pretty much every day.