It’s really hard to imagine living all winter through without central heating but that is what the students and on-campus teaching staff will do this year, as they do every year. The foreign teaching staff housed in the “White House” [named for the color and its location on the hill of the campus, not for the reference to the US] has ac/heating units in their apartments [thankfully]. Over the weekend the mercury dropped to its lowest point since my arrival and since I still cannot read a Chinese website or figure out what time the evening news is on I have no number for how cold it got. I will say that it got one t-shirt, one long sleeve light weight thermal, button down shirt, sweater, coat, scarf, and gloves – cold outside. Still not quite cold enough to ice – I know since it rained – but it didn’t feel much to far above the point of freezing. Or I may be exaggerating, who knows.

I was excited to see my site today without proxy filters for the first time since early November.

What else… My list of vocabulary is improving steadily though I doubt I could write much of the words I can say. I tell people I can say more than I can hear, which is to say, I can pronounce more words than I can understand when I hear them said back to me. I will try to put down an accurate pin yin list of the words and phrases I know so far in the next post. And I am not finished with the Shanghai trip, I know, but I wanted to post up that it has gotten cold outside and my site is visible here in China today.