Spring Weather

The weather here right now is crazy. On Monday it was very cold; not below zero cold, but certainly "crap, I'm not wearing enough clothes" cold. In the space of two days it has gone straight to hot, without any intervening warmth. Today is definitely ice cream weather, and I am probably sunburnt.

At any rate, I wandered around Xi'an with Dane, an Australian who took the same TESOL course as me, and by luck more than design ended up in the same city when he came to China to teach. We had lunch in Islamic Street, which has the best food ever, and is also the first time I've tried to order food without someone who speaks at least a little Chinese. We chickened out and went straight to the place that said "we have an English menu" on a sign outside, and the food was awesome.

Also, I stopped by the post office and finally managed to get postcards! Soon we will see how well the postal service here deals with English-addressed mail. The woman at the desk was beside herself when I asked for thirty postcards. She just couldn't get over it, and I depleted most of their supply of postcards. She handed me a stack to look through, and I picked a few of each kind until I had thirty. I handed the two piles back to her, and she said something I didn't understand, but judging by her expression it was the Chinese equivalent of "oh my god". Then she started to count the smaller pile of cards, and I had to tell her that she was counting the wrong pile. You can imagine her reaction!

So, I have a lot of cards to write and post. Look in your mailboxes in a couple of weeks or so!