In full force.
It's hot now, and suddenly I feel angry that we had no real transition from the bitter cold, to the heavy oppressive hot weather. Seriously, during the day it is so warm that my students sweat in class, and we have to open all the windows, but this lets in all the noise from the street, and I wish my university had some sort of air cooling system, even ceiling fans would do, but it doesn't.
The perks are that trees are budding and flowering and they look beautiful. Green shoots of grass are popping out of the black burned ground. Big black hoses criss cross the streets and sidewalk watering the trees and grass. Even with all the watering, the landscape is still so dry. Whenever it's windy here, we get a wall full of sand, along with the wind. Many of my students were born here, will live here all there lives, and will die here. This will be the only climate they know. I feel slightly bad for them.
Along indication it's Spring, is the proliferation of couples kissing under trees and sitting on benches when the sun goes down. When I take Nina for a walk around 10pm, it's seriously CROWDED outside. Sometimes Nina gets nervous when she sees two shadowy figures under a tree and she starts to bark at them. As I walk down paths and sidewalks, I'm constantly weaving my way around couples, and I feel like an intruder.
In the early mornings, too-- it is crowded outside. I take Nina out at 6:30am before I go to work, so she can do her thing. At this time there are students everywhere memorizing their texts out loud, in Chinese, in English, and they slowly pace up and down a bit of sidewalk or grass, but not too far, because there are other people nearby doing the same thing. A good majority of my students wake up at 5am these days to memorize their texts, go running, or participate in an early morning class. The students who sleep in till 7am are seen as lazy. These students are in class all day long. I really don't understand how they don't collapse. They motivate me to work harder for what I want to accomplish.
Spring in Tongliao =
a lot less clothes
earlier mornings
later nights
harder studying
more kissing
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