It is cold here. Really. Like really cold. Well, ok, I should qualify this.
I haven’t had real fall like weather since 2007, and that was in good ole Atlanta and so it really wasn’t that cold feeling till later, and even then I was more prepared for it. That is a good part of the reason. Senegal only had coldish weather starting maybe around December, and then, well, it was Africa cold, like 80s, that kind of cold. But to be fair, it was really like one long summer, punctuated by periods of more heat, more rain, or more wind. Though generally, it was a big long two and a half year summer.
And now apparently it is fall. I was first informed that it was fall back in September. That was around the time that I was teaching with rolled up sleeves and sweating through the shirt anyway. My fan and AC were on whenever I was at home and I thought that I really should invest in a hand fan (though they just don’t seem the same after having one in Africa so long). It was hot here. Not really like dreadful Sahel heat, but up to 40 some days and the worst was that it was humid. The air is so thick sometimes with coal smoke and fog that it is hard to see the scenery, even mountains that are just a kilometer or two away. But anyway, it was hot, and that was only a month ago.
Now I guess the seasons are changing or something. Though you cannot tell it here from the trees. There is one kind of tree found in a couple spots on campus that looks like it is losing its leaves. But then maybe it is just diseased or something. Everything else is a green as ever. Anyway, so I guess it has been around in the 50s this last week. Not terrifically cold, but cold enough for me. The other problem is that that I don’t really have any kind of reliable way to heat my apartment. There is this AC thing that is up near the ceiling that I can switch to heat, but it only stays on for a couple minutes at a time, maybe enough to heat the ceiling near its thermometer, then it clicks off and I think the heat must mostly all go to the windowpane a foot away and the rest of the room, let alone the rest of the apartment, stays about just as cold as it would be anyway. So that’s to say, I wake up pretty cold, which I would enjoy except that I have class at 8.30 most mornings and this cold really makes me want to sleep past 7.
It’s becoming more of a problem because I really don’t have enough winter clothes. I knew this coming over but I figured I would just pick stuff up here and so far that hasn’t really worked out. Bargaining is a bit intimidating when you don’t speak the language enough to say more than some numbers and the things I would bargain for here aren’t on the same level as Senegalese prices (where I could get a shirt and shoes together for three dollars if it’s a good day). Not to say that I don’t have some. I even have a couple of nice suit jackets that my aunt was nice enough to help me get. But I will need to invest in a couple sweaters and maybe a coat before this winter comes on for real. And that is really strange because I am told that it doesn’t even snow here so it shouldn’t even get as cold as Atlanta…
The other fun news of the day is that because of various factors that are beyond my understanding, the school here has decided to keep its students from trouble in the city by instituting a 7 day school week. I was informed of this for this weekend by a phone call at 8am saying that I needed to teach on Saturday like it was a Tuesday, and teach on this Sunday like it was a Wednesday. That is just super fun. Not. The students seem disgruntled, I am certainly disgruntled, and I don’t even know who or what to be mad at. There are rumblings that it will continue next weekend and maybe will go on to the indefinite future. I sure hope not, maybe someone will talk some sense into someone this week to stop all that from going on. I didn’t even have the will to do anything today about class. I had been thinking of traveling to visit some other volunteers who were having a Halloween party in Chongqing. But I guess it is a good thing that I wasn’t there because then I would have missed all this excitement…. I also wanted to do a movie club meeting this weekend. Oh and maybe relax, that would have been fun too. But today I showed pictures of Halloween stuff in America and told them, from the best of my memory some American fairy tales that involved witches and pied-pipers and whatnot. The students just wanted to watch a movie, but I don’t know if I can get away with that much laziness.
Anyway, here’s to hoping for the weekend…
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