Woke up to torrential rains and a massive headache. Could it be the barometric pressure causing my head to spin? Up early and out of here, need to catch a taxi before everyone else gets going. Umbrella in hand, rain jacket on and Keens on feet, a hike to the taxi stop and then a 20 minute wait. I get a female taxi driver and off to school we go. Michael fixes me a strong coffee for my headache, maybe I am caffeine deficient he says. He maybe right! How nice to have a man fix me anything. What wonderful colleagues I am working with. By noon I’m back to normal.
After classes the IB coordinator and I check out the Art Supply shopping district! Oh my a new “hog heaven” for me, and some one tell mom it is right next door to the antique vendors. We need to take a day and go shopping. Yes, next day off I will return for an art and antique expenditure day.
Speaking of next day off — we have three days off next week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It’s a holiday, or maybe not! To get this holiday, we teach our Wednesday class on this Sunday and the following Saturday and Sunday we teach our Thursday and Friday class. Someone explain to the Chinese that we don’t give up weekends for three days off in the middle of the week! Maybe it is like a “Chinese fire drill”—- were things get lost in translation and everyone does things “bass ackwards.” Oh well, guess that holiday will be my art and antique shopping day!
I realized today that most all my students wear glasses, no contacts! I suppose Lasik is out too. No makeup on women, no bleached hair, no manicures or pedicures– no nail polish on anyone, but my little toesies! (No manicure shops for that matter) No need for botox, or stomach stapling, no one has wrinkles or is overweight. People are healthy looking here, all this walking and biking, no wonder. Most Americans would have a coronary within a week of living in this environment. And by the way, they don’t like Air Conditioning or cold anything, including water and beer. Even yogurt is hot. The weather is somewhat like Galveston, hot, humid and gritty. I always said I was the one person that liked Houston weather, well here I am on the same latitude lines! Must admit, I like it tho. Daniel told me today he drew a picture of the sun and put it on his desk! He misses the sun with all the overcast, smoggy, cloudy or what ever these skies are days! I’ve always liked warm, just need to get use to no AC! That is hard. I am too Americanized –soft!