As she has posted, Zeneta is now back. Winter has also arrived. The temperatures are very close to what one would be seeing in Yreka. The rain is very cold and people are talking of the, expected, snow.
While Zeneta was gone the weather was pretty mild and I went out to dinner with my students, and Michelle's students, rather often. Along with doing to some of the places that I typically frequent, the students took me to some of the places that are more popular with the students. One thing I did notice is that, in comparison with American students, the Chinese students do not drink much beer. Most often I just see them drinking hot water.
Dinner with a couple of my students at a popular eatery.
I took this picture because, as an American, I can not recall seeing a pull tab on a can in over twenty years.
Dinner with one of Michelle's students. Zeneta was with me that night. However, she did not like the food as much as I did. It was goat in a very hot (both in temperature and spice) boiling sauce. There is a fire under the meat keeping it hot. I though it was great.
Zeneta wanted rice, which this restaurant did not serve, so the waiter shouted out the window to another restaurant, on the other side of the alley, to make some and bring it over to us.
I find it funny that Debra sent a travel guide back with Zeneta for me to look at and work on planning our February vacation. One of the parts of the book that she marked for me was the northwest areas. This is the part of china that is north of Tibet. Considering that both she and Zeneta are complaining about the cold, this just does not seem to be the best of plans. I am thinking more in terms of going south, as far south as we can go. We discovered that her visa would not allow her to leave and then reenter the country; it is a single entry visa. So, we will not go to Viet Nam; however, we will probably head for the province closest to it.
After arriving, Zeneta decided that she could no longer live without World Of Warcraft. It is now installed on the computer here in our flat and, at this moment, she is entirely absorbed into her game. After returning she did go and purchase some furniture. She purchased a set of shelves to store food, and such, on and a kitchen table. We have still been unable to locate a room divider, something that we would call a Japanese room divider.
The new table and chairs.
We ended up rearranging the apartment so that the room that has the heater is now the den instead of using it for a bedroom and what was the storage room is now being used for a bedroom.
The bedroom, yes it is small. It made no sense to devote the largest room in the flat to sleeping.
This is now the den, it used to be the bedroom. The heaters here are something to mention. Heat is clearly considered a luxury. The classrooms are entirely unheated. However, they tend to be much warmer than the hallways due to the number of people in them. The only parts of the school that are heated are the administrative offices. The dormitories are also unheated and there is no provision for heat. If the students use more than their monthly allotment, of electricity, for the individual rooms (each room is shared by six students) they either have to pay extra or go without electricity for the rest of the month.
We have heat in the way of a heat pump that is mounted outside with flex pipe leading to the heat/AC head that is in the room nearest the unit. This is a classic example of the way that things here are done. Instead of placing the head in the living room, it is placed in the nearest room. Worse, the excess flex pipe, which could be doing something useful; like radiating heat in the rooms it passes through, is coiled up outside with poor insulation around it.
The photos I show are of the type of Heat/AC unit that is common everywhere we have gone. As you can see from some of the pictures I have included, these same units are used in all sorts of applications, whether they are properly sized and suited for the task or not.
Hot water is also an afterthought (and is not available in the classroom buildings or in the dormitories). These are some pictures of the typical hot water heater (called a, "geezer," by the South African that is here with us). This is also the most popular style found and can be seen in some up-scale furniture and appliance stores. The alternative, which is more popular, is the solar units seen on almost every roof in China.
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