Sandstorm!!! And no, I'm not talking about that Darude song, this is the real thing. Spring has indeed arrived in Baoding, bringing with it a few tons of sand from the north-west. Apparently, it's a common thing this time of year, to have the wind throw just about everything all over the place, and carrying sand and dust everywhere. Today, just trying to walk down the street back from the university, I had my eyes full of little grains and bits... Will remember to wear those sun glasses tomorrow!!

Other than that, the temperature has suddenly climbed up to the 20s (centigrade, of course). For some reason, I feel like it changes the whole place. China has gone from being a chilly place with Siberia-like icy wind, to a rather pleasant temperate country, with a warm breeze. That is, of course, when the wind doesn't dump half the Gobi desert on your doorstep. But you know what I mean. This weekend, I was in Beijing and it just felt really different. In the bar area in Sanlitun, bars and cafes had their tables outside, people sitting around, having a pint and enjoying the sun. Now that's how I like it :)

And at the same time, everything seems to have suddenly turned green. And those trees that aren't green yet, are full of white, pink and yellow flowers (now you will have to ask my students to know what trees they are... i can just tell you the colours).

Thus, all in all, I'm enjoying the change, and feel like it's affecting my own mood too. Just no more sand, please!!


...and here was the weather report for the day.

St Patrick's pictures are up. Check out the sponge cake!

I apologise for the appalling quality of the pics, as I used flash everyone looks very pink and shiny and has a freaky shadow behind them... think of it as art, ehem...

They seem to have changed the website so that the most recent pictures don't come up first anymore, so to check the new photos you have to go to the last pages of the album (page 5 & page 6).

Last week Mrs Feng called me and asked me if she could bring a friend of hers to my class for one afternoon. Turned out, this friend was a man in his late forties who goes by the English name of Frank (Had another one visit the class later last week, by the name of Uking... hummm.) and works in the Baoding taxation bureau and been doing some auditing at NongDa in the past couple of weeks. This guy has learned English all by himself, and speaks rather well, actually... even better than my PhD students. And he is really eager to learn more, and to talk talk talk talk.

So, on this past tuesday morning I met frank after 7 am (!!!!!) at the university, and he then took me to his office in the west of the city for breakfast and a look around his office. It was quite interesting to see the offices and how that sort of thing works here. But now I have to say Frank is getting a little overwhelming, inviting me here and there and wanting to meet up all the time... ugghh. There's something about him that just makes me a little unconfortable, don't know...

Other than that, we're having a little St Patrick's Day (I know we're a little late) gettogether over at Griselle's tonight for us laowais, should be fun.

I feel like I have done just about nothing the whole week (and the week before that, and...). I'm getting a feeling that I should be using my time here better, that I'm not taking advantage of it like I could. Instead, I just do plain *nothing*, which makes me feel even more blaaahhh and the less I even feel like doing anything at all. I'm in what Ella & Kirsi would call 'amoeba mood', 100%. And it doesn't exactly help that the weather has been cold, cloudy and the pollution just hangs over everything like a wet blanket. But, I just need to snap out of it, get up from the sofa and do something about it!!

New pictures are up!!

Three things that made me happy today:

1) I found deorant in a supermarket in Baoding!!!! It's a miracle!!!

2) We finished our first Chinese book that we have been using for the lessons, and today started the second one. Yay! Although it's all still very simple, I really feel like I'm making progress. This term also Bishi is taking the class with us, which is nice as we can all now have little conversations in class in Chinese. So we are over the stage of mere repetition and learning things by heart, now we actually *talk* in class... :))

3) The first trees, the weeping willows, are starting to turn green. The spring is here!

Today I was once again performing some death-defying stunts on my bike in the middle of the stream of Baoding lunch time traffic. Here mostly everyone has a two-hour lunch break, from 12 to 2 p.m., during which they all go home to eat and maybe have a little nap. So, in the middle of the day thousands and thousands of people get on their bikes, on the buses and pedicabs and hit the streets. Oh what fun! But in the middle of all this chaos today, I was thinking to myself how it all, everything that I see around me and live through, somehow doesn't seem all that Chinese anymore. I mean in the beginning it was obvious to me how the music, the food, the people, the traffic - all of it was so very Chinese. And now it all just seems so...well... normal. I guess I've come to that point in the cultural adaptation where my life here is what seems normal now, and were I to go to Europe, for example, right now, I'm sure it would all strike me as so very European.

Remember when I mentioned that donkeys were pulling carts loaded with Chinese cabbage just when the winter was beginning? Well, the season has definitely changed now since these same (?) donkeys are now pulling carts full of pineapples, with peasants selling the fruit to passers-by. And ahhh, those strawberries!!

This past weekend was a really good one. On saturday I had dinner with Griselle, Malcolm and Fritha, after which G and I headed to Nongfu where we were supposed to meet a couple of people from Hebei University. It turned out that also almost everyone else from our little group of foreigners had the same idea, so in the end we were about 20 people, and had a really nice night. It's fun to be with such a diverse group, with ages ranging from 19 to 65 and people of 8 different nationalities.

On sunday, Guillaume, who is teaching economics in Beijing for a couple of months, came over to see what Baoding is all about, and we spent a lovely day just walking around, having lunch, coffee and catching up. After a really cold week, saturday was suddenly very warm (for this time of year), with the temperature going up to 15C and the sun shining all day long. Spring!!

Oh, and last week I bought a cheap acoustic guitar, and will now become a famous rock star. Maybe. :)

I also have a couple of pictures I'd like to upload, but there is something wrong with my camera's (computer's?) USB connection...humm...

Though at times I may not be the most motivated teacher, it's the people I get to meet and spend time with that make it all sooo worth it. I just got back from a dinner at the school cantine with two girls from my last term's class, and once again they made me smile simply by being so so friendly and nice... we actually had a really nice talk, definitely far beyond the typical "how do you like china" -talk.

As for my PhD class, the talk often turns into marriage and male-female relationships (the age-old universal topic, i suppose). As most of the students are married, I have had the chance to learn a lot about the way the Chinese view marriage and families. A lot of the times, the women tease men and vice versa, jokingly complaining about husbands and wives. But behind all the jokes seems to be something that goes deeper into the very nature of marriage here. Almost all of the married students were introduced to their spouse by a middleman, as it traditionally goes. Marriages seem to be more a union of convinience, between two people with similar aspirations who get along (somewhat). The whole western idea of 'true love' and all that is pretty much totally absent. A married couple is the basic unit, completed by the one child they are allowed to have. To not get married is just about unthinkable for most people, though this is something that is changin quickly in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai where young people tend to be more career orientated and have a more westernized lifestyle.

But like I said, behind the jokes I'm hearing a lot more. People keep telling me how most marriages in China are somewhat unhappy and make constant joking comments about the desire to get a divorce and find a new partner. I think people are very committed to their marriages and *especially* the children and their education, but at the bottom of it there are hints of discontent.

A Chinese saying was mentioned in class: "The neighbour's wife is always more beautiful than yours, but your own child is always better and smarter than the others." I think this is rather descriptive of everything I have seen and heard re:marriages and families here.

In the recent years, divorce has been made much easier to get in terms of the legislation. However, most people still view it as something shameful, and thus try to work on the marriage as long as humanly possible before admitting it a failure. Another saying that the students used to describe this attitude was that "The mountains around always seem higher and more difficult to climb than the one you are standing on."

And of course you would stay together for the sake of your child...children really are often everything for their parents here. A student mentioned a story of a Chinese couple, who finally got a divorce, at the ages of 97 and 95. This couple realised after marrying each other that they didn't want to stay together but by this time the wife was pregnant. So, they thought that they should stay together for the sake of the child. Now finally when their child died, they decided to go through with the divorce, though both of them are nearing the age of 100...