So I noticed over the weekend that my apartment was getting cold. I felt the radiators and they were cold. Hmmm... so I went down to the manager's office (in another building about 300 meters away) to ask about it. When I walk in the door, the woman that works there almost immediately grabs the phone to call someone who can translate for me. I tell them my apartment is cold. She says, that's not a problem, all the heat is shut off for 6 hours a day (from Midnight - 3am and Noon - 3pm) and it will be back on shortly.(Never mind that it wasn't during those hours when I came in.) So it was cold all weekend and still cold this morning (I had my trusty little space heater at the foot of my bed to keep me warm) and I knew something was not right. When you buy heat here, it is like all utilities, the money you pay is loaded onto a credit card for that utility, which you insert into a meter designated for that utility at your apartment. The utility will last until your money is used up, then you go reload the card again (It's really annoying when your electricity suddenly goes out at 9pm and the office is closed so you can't buy more electricity until the next day). I had bought heat back in November around the time when they turned the heat on (November 15). There should have been plenty left. But I had never inserted my heating card anywhere because I saw any place to put it, so I figured in my illogical American mind that the heating is handled differently. Well, we found out, after much discussion and back-and-forth, that the money I had put on the card was still on the card, and apparently I had been using whatever money had been left on the heating meter when I moved into the apartment. So where is the heating meter to insert the card, you ask? Across the hall from my apartment door inside a locked room. Now why didn't I know that? So a technician came over to sort it all out and I now have heat. The purpose of this little discussion is just to give you a flavor of what it's like oftentimes to get something done here. You don't get the right story the first time, then they try to brush you off so they don't have to do any work, and you end up calling a technician to fix a problem that never should have been a problem...
One of the reasons I wanted to get the heat on quickly was that there is actually snow in the forecast for the first time since I've been here. I thought it might be nice to have a warm place to go to...
Whether or not the snow comes, we'll see - my students say never trust a chinese weather forecast.
We went and saw The Hobbit in 3-D on Saturday afternoon. The movie (in 3-D) was only $4.00. Not bad, eh? I stay away from the popcorn because they serve it with sugar (which is OK) but I still prefer the good old artery hardening salt and butter.
Our students take their semester exams the end of this week. They don't get too worked up over them because for them the tests don't really mean anything. The only thing they care about are the SAT, AP, and Toefl (english proficiency test). Last week 2 of my classes were gone on Thursday and Friday as they flew to Hong Kong to take the SAT (it is not given in mainland China). They are not satisfied unless they get scores of 750 or better (800 is the max on the subjects). The only time they will say that they did well is if they get a perfect score. It is crazy. They have absolutely no trouble with the math section, but spend countless hours studying the english and vocabulary. I would venture to say that they know more vocabulary than most American students. Using the words correctly in a sentence, however, is another story...
If you looked at the photos from the Terracota warriors adventure last weekend, you may have noticed how close we got to them. In fact, we were standing there with our arms around them. Sorry to say those were not the real warriors - those were some duplicates that you could pay $1 to get your picture taken with them.
It has been rather polluted lately - I went out and bought myself a comfortable mask today. The disposable ones I've been wearing are not comfortable at all:
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