Surviving in the Subtropics

It’s hot and humid here, ALL of the time. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine a hotter place. It’s certainly the hottest place we’ve lived in. While it’s breezy up on the hill where we are, there are few screens on the windows so we can’t really take advantage of it. So we are thankful for our air conditioners.

The temperature has averaged around 34ºC with the humidity making it feel more like 43ºC. The nights don’t cool down very much either. In fact, the night time temps would cause a warning in Ottawa. So how have we been surviving? We sweat… a lot. If we go outside for any length of time, we have to change as soon as we get back inside. Thankfully we have a washing machine and a balcony to hang our clothes to dry. We even have a laundry stick that allows us to hang our clothes up high on the ceiling of the balcony. Imagine a stick with a hook on the end. We also keep our curtains closed for much of the day since the heat and the sun beat in.

Another reason we keep our curtains closed in the kitchen is that it overlooks the little convenience store and one of the student dormitories. So when we cook at the stove top, we can see them and they can see us. In fact, today when we put the mop out on the balcony to dry, there were 2 students sitting on the grass right below.

Lily gave us a tour of the campus today. We were shown the 2 canteens, the teaching buildings and another little convenience store. We found a couple of places on campus where we could see the ocean and enjoyed a nice breeze as we walked around. We also found out that there is no barber on campus like in Jinan so we’ll have to head to the nearby village for Don’s haircut. I will wait to find a place in town I think.

Oh yeah, we got class lists today. Don is teaching 9 classes and I’m teaching 8. We will be teaching close to 400 students each. Yikes! We normally try to get to know the students’ names but feel less than confident that we’ll be able to do that here due to the numbers and due to the fact that we’ll only see each class once a week. Don starts on Monday and I start on Tuesday. Wish us luck.

J