originally written: Thursday, November 12, 2009
(Winter Wonderland)
This morning when I left the hotel, it was unusually quiet. It had been lightly snowing all night and so there was about a foot of snow on the ground. Having grown up in Canada, this was no big thing for me. I was relieved to finally see something beautiful come from all this cold weather! What was novel for me was how the residents of Kaifeng reacted to this snowfall. Because it’s quite early for snow here and this amount is rare, no one was prepared. Once I reached the street, I realized why it was so eerily quiet outside: there wasn’t one vehicle to be seen. No taxis, cars, tuk-tuks or bikes honking and yelling away; just pedestrians everywhere. It was a surreal moment. I don’t speak the language and always stand out as a foreigner here, but for this short moment I truly felt like part of the community as we all went to work in the same way.
Most of my colleagues are Australian and so I was highly entertained all day with their reactions to the snow. Many were snapping photos all day; one woman (probably around 60 years old or so) even started a snowball fight after lunch. Lots of businesses have built snowmen outside their doors (which all look like the one pictured in this email). They are all decorated according to what is sold inside the store; the optometrist’s snowman is wearing glasses.
Tomorrow my students have their first assessment since I’ve started teaching them. This means I’ll have 70 papers to mark this weekend and lots of instant coffee - maybe I’ll write a whole poem dedicated to it this time; a haiku just might not be enough. Enjoy the photos!
This morning when I left the hotel, it was unusually quiet. It had been lightly snowing all night and so there was about a foot of snow on the ground. Having grown up in Canada, this was no big thing for me. I was relieved to finally see something beautiful come from all this cold weather! What was novel for me was how the residents of Kaifeng reacted to this snowfall. Because it’s quite early for snow here and this amount is rare, no one was prepared. Once I reached the street, I realized why it was so eerily quiet outside: there wasn’t one vehicle to be seen. No taxis, cars, tuk-tuks or bikes honking and yelling away; just pedestrians everywhere. It was a surreal moment. I don’t speak the language and always stand out as a foreigner here, but for this short moment I truly felt like part of the community as we all went to work in the same way.
Most of my colleagues are Australian and so I was highly entertained all day with their reactions to the snow. Many were snapping photos all day; one woman (probably around 60 years old or so) even started a snowball fight after lunch. Lots of businesses have built snowmen outside their doors (which all look like the one pictured in this email). They are all decorated according to what is sold inside the store; the optometrist’s snowman is wearing glasses.
Tomorrow my students have their first assessment since I’ve started teaching them. This means I’ll have 70 papers to mark this weekend and lots of instant coffee - maybe I’ll write a whole poem dedicated to it this time; a haiku just might not be enough. Enjoy the photos!
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