Spring Festival!

Kirk, Daniel, and I in Thailand a few years ago.  I'm ready to return soon!

Hello again everyone!

This update will be very short, as not a whole lot new has happened since Christmas and New Year's.  Our Spring Festival (春节 or chun jie in Chinese) break just started yesterday!  If you don't remember me mentioning this from past years, think of it as our Christmas and New Year's holidays all merged into one big day.  They celebrate the New Year according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

My favorite part about the holiday is a REALLY long vacation.  Today is January 20th, and I'll probably start teaching again around February 25th.  I'll be hanging around Jingzhou for about a week, then head to Thailand for a week with some friends.  I am extremely ready for this break.  As I mentioned before, it's been really cold here.  I read on the news that this might be China's coldest winter over the last 20 years.  On top of that, the air pollution has been TERRIBLE the last two weeks.  You might have heard about it as it has even made the news in America.

To give you an idea on how bad it's been, I'll use an app that I have on my iPod.  It measures a few different things in the air such as sulfur dioxide and the size of the air particles.  It then averages them all out to give a number.  The higher the number the worse the pollution.  My first two years here, I got a ridiculous amount of sinus infections from the dirty air in Wuhan, especially from running outside.  When I found out about this app last year, I learned that if the number was less than 100, I would probably be okay running outside.  If it was over, I'd probably get sick.  FYI, I would guess that a town in America such as Spring Arbor would have an average number around 20 or so!  Today is the first time in two weeks it's actually been less than 100, and it's reached as high as 300 this past week!

All that mostly just to say I am ready for warm weather and clean air in Thailand!

I hope you all are doing well!  I will hopefully send an update about my trip sometime in February.

Malachi 3:10