We don't get a lot of dramatic weather here in Windanseaville...sunny days, foggy days, and not much in between. This storm blew through overnight on Saturday and by Sunday we had Mary at the beach. She swam while John and I huddled in sweatshirts, chilled by the 65° afternoon.
This morning we heard from Anna, who's in Shanghai right now. She left on Saturday for a three-week exchange in China with her school and is spending this week attending classes at a high school there. She writes:
Hey daddy! It's me anna, I'm here in china and can already say i've reasonably beaten the time change. I feel like I've spent three days on a plane, really i have. We missed our flight in beijing and had to get a later flight, but we're finally at the school. It's cold. Like really cold. Like 5 degrees centigrade cold. Really cold. I mean, where's all this global warming I was promised?
Meh, walked around shanghai all day, I'm exhausted. I spent the morning in my partner's classes, music (which was nice, we sang, and there was an electric bass sitting in the corner), then math class (i couldn't figure out which kind, but we were doing sine, cosine, and tangent), politics and chinese of all things.
After, we went to the museum (I don't know which kind) but it was full of chinese art and money and artifacts and stuff. I started sketching a small statue (totally forgetting I had a camera) and after a while people started to watch over my shoulder. A lot of people crowded around to watch me sketch and to study the statue, to see what had caught my interest. I only noticed when I was done that I had drawn the attention of a lot of people (and several guards!). I suppose they wanted to make sure the crowd wasn't a commotion.
I got a lot of pictures along the way too. I felt kinda dumb because I walked into some people (the crowds are crazy) and tried apologizing, conveniently forgetting any chinese I had ever learned at that moment, not only did the people have no time for "sorry"s and "excuse me"s but of course the alerting sound of a foreign language and defensive "excuse me" hand gestures I think scared a lot of people. All of it was pretty exciting, and with sore feet and tired mind soon I will go to bed (it's about 8 o'clock here). I'm well and safe in China, not injured or sick, happily awaiting tomorow's adventures. I love you a lot.
To my entire family my love,
Anna
P.S. tell snoopy and patty and all the rest that I'm ice cold at night without them and I really am coming back, love them lots.
You'll notice I'm not mentioned by name like Patty & Snoopy, but I can tell she's thinking about me because of the "injured or sick" part. I'm pretty sure that was for my benefit. I had to go look up how cold 5°C is, and it's 41°F...Here's hoping she doesn't decide to go to school in New England. And PS, I told her to pack layers.
It's weird to think of my kid walking around on the other side of the world across the date line where it's tomorrow, a world apart and yet happy with sore feet.
5 comments:
I think it's pretty cool! I did an exchange for three weeks in college. It was an experience, lol. So you should feel so happy and proud that she is happy, sore feet and all.
Sounds like so much fun. I hope the whole trip goes as well for her.
The sky is just gorgeous! My son is in Mexico for a week. Not as far away as China, but I know how you feel.
Beautiful pictures! I miss living where there are palm trees and beaches. Mountains, however, are an acceptable substitute. :)
Beautiful pictures! That same storm dropped some crazy loud hail on us. I heard it pounding the west side of our house and had to look to see what it was.
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