Where the sun don't shine

The students/my kids here are really nice. I am going to miss them too when they go to Australia in January. Then, I suppose, I will have to start on the next class. Peter’s 'kids' (students) are a lot older and not so cute and helpless as mine. Mine are like teenagers back in the 50s, back in "Happy Days" or something - not in the way they dress, but in their innocence and naiveté.

We were standing outside the college front gate today, talking about the little section of grass there (rarely see lawn here) which still had snow on it four days after the rest of the snow had melted. That's because the sun never shines there. So now we know, we have found 'it', that mysterious place ... you know! When someone tells you they will "stick it where the sun don't shine" ... its here! All we need to do now is find the land of missing pens and pencils. I think that might be in China somewhere too.

The babies here are so cute. They look really fat, but that's mostly because its cold and they put layers and layers of clothes on them ‘til they can hardly move. Over the top they usually wear like a little back-to-front shirt, tied at the back, to stop them getting their clothes dirty. And pretty well everyone wears sleeve protectors on their arms - like a sleeve just from the elbow to the wrist - so you don't get the sleeves of your winter clothes messy. Clever little Orientals!

We have a saying here - "Nothing is ever as it seems". We keep proving that over and over. Like you buy some pretty foil-wrapped lollies, and find little meaty things inside, and what looks like colourful malteesers are soy nut things. There are so many things to taste and try, because you don't know until you do.

And all the time people are chattering at you in Chinese. It just never occurs to them that you don't get it. And then if you make dumb hand-signs at them they assume you are deaf and first shout louder, and then write it down in Chinese for you. Of course, Peter delights in saying all sorts of silly things back to them, "That's easy for you to say!" and the like. The poor taxi driver who brought us home from the city, Zhengzhou, last night had some thoughts about the unfairness of the fare he had agreed on ( by hand signs) with us before we even got into his taxi ... we can only guess what they were!