Oh The Weather Outside Is Awesome

Wercome wercome. It's been a hellacious couple of weeks here with intermittent spatterings of awesomeness, but I gotta say the bad has has most definitely outweighed the good as of late and I'm ready for that to turn around.

Let's get this out of the way:

Podcast: Made In China Vol. 16

Now, down to the business. It's snowing here as I type this. Most people here in China are not please about this but I absolutely love it. I've been jonesin for a little bit of home lately and this weather provided some much needed comfort.

I suppose I'll go back for a quick recap since the last post. A few weeks ago I had a rough week. Can't really say why, I was behind on sleep and it just seemed to drag on forever. This was also right when a quick bout of the flu swept through our school, and when you work at a boarding school something like that hits pretty much everyone. The kids were dropping like flies from a bug zapper, and this began a couple weeks straight of never having a complete attendance. So, not much sleep, unenthusiastic/sick kids, oh, and it got cold. Now, those of you back in MN may be saying to yourself, "But Ben, it's been cold here since like August". While this may be true, you also live in a free country, that is to say, a country where you are free to control the heating in your own home. I, however, live in a country where the government decides what date the rest of the country can turn on their heat, and the usual date is November 15th. That's right. If you check your calenders, you might notice that date still hasn't passed yet. And it's been cold here for about 3 weeks now. Not MN cold, but just above freezing at night cold, and when you don't have heat, that means it's barely warmer than that in your apartment, and that my friends sucks huge. So, well into a shitty week I went and saw DJ Kid Koala and that was pretty bangin.

Even though I was already tired as hell, I made it to the end of his show (around 1:30am) and still made it to school on time the next day. Dude's got some serious chops on the turntables. I've been a fan since around sophomore year of highschool and was pretty excited to see him. I dragged along a couple friends who said they liked it, but I'd say maybe a quarter of the audience could comprehend the turntablism they were seeing, the rest just got drunk and danced and had a good time.

That saturday we had an all day sports meet at our school with the kids. The weather turned around for pretty much that one day and we ended up with clear skies (a rarity in this smoggy city) and temps in the 60's. Perfect weather for some sports. This year was much better planned than last year and ended up being a lot of fun rather than tiring as shit. After the day was over I started up a game of touch football with the older international kids and a few teachers and played for about an hour. I hadn't played touch football since highschool so that was a blast. I highly recommend doing it if you haven't for a long while.

Oh, that saturday also happened to be the 31szt of October. Some of you may also know this date as Halloween.

Also, just to give you an idea of the work that went into that mustache, I present you with the following:

Also, that great weather I just spoke of lasted all of about 12 hours, because right around 9pm on the 31st of October it started to rain. Then it started to snow. That first picture up there is from the morning of November 1st. And I was wearing nothing more than what you see above.

Begin: shitty week #2

Following the night of running around in the rain and snow in short shorts and a tank top I did indeed pick up a cold. To make matters worse, my Grandma died. That tuesday was among the top worst tuesdays of my entire life, but I did discover that a quick cry will clear your sinuses out quite nicely. It wasn't entirely expected (complications from a surgery) and it was the first time I realized how far away I am from home. I usually feel like I could just hop a flight home if I ever really needed to, but in this case the worst happened and there was nothing I could do. At this point I'm doing fine. A few downs here and there, but what really gets to me now is being so far from the rest of my family. The best I can do is send emails or call, things that pale in comparison to a hug. Anyways, the dog's been extra snuggly lately which has been nice.

That friday I went and saw this dude.

"Clive Chin is a Chinese Jamaican record producer whose work includes seminal recordings by The Wailers, Dennis Brown, LeePerry and Black Uhuru, among others. "

He spun some classic Reggae jams all night after giving a short talk about his experience in the scene and growing up around all that music. I talked to him for a few minutes towards the end of the night It was pretty neat to a) meet a Chinese dude with a Jamaican accent b) meet someone who was around and played an integral part in the popularization of such an awesome genre of music and c) get to listen to it all night at a bar in Beijing.

It snowed again on monday, and this time around it wasn't just a dusting. Beijing got somewhere around 3 to 4 inches in a single night. That made getting to work something of an adventure. After taking 40 minutes to get a cab I made it school only 20 or so minutes late. After school I decided I'd show some of these kids who'd never before seen this much snow how to handle a snowball. Little did I know that as soon as I threw one, I opened up pandora's box in terms of a snowball war. Of course, every student wants to hit their teacher with a snowball. How could I have possibly overlooked that? Next thing I knew snowballs were flying from all directions, most coming from the older kids (who can throw pretty damn hard) and who are unaware that headshots are unsportsmanlike. After 4 lazerbeam shots to the head I retreated in doors. Not to be outdone, I ventured back out after a few minutes, recruited a few students and opened thigns back up. I like to believe that final outcome was a draw if you ignore that first lopsided massacre.

Oh, somewhere in there I tipped over on my bike and ended up with a fat lip and a banged up knee cap, but things seem to be healing well.

Now, this city doesn't have snow plows but they do have a shit load of people, so after only an afternoon of millions of peoples worth of shoveling power, most of the streets were clear and Beijing traffic resumed it's usual chaos. Now, two days later it's snowing again. I rode my bike this time. I made it with icy pants cuffs, glasses that I could barely see through and and a water stain on my carhartts that ran from my crotch and down the inside of each pant leg (my studetns still don't believe it was from the weather) and honestly I couldn't have been happier. I've had three relatively snowless winters in a row and without even realizing it, this was the little piece of home that I needed right now.

The view from my classroom

Check you later folks,

-Ben