Hot weather

You know, you'd love it here. The little people are so ... I don't even know why I think of them as "little" people. A lot of them are very slight, but there are lots of big ones too! I think it’s because they are so poor and their lives are so small. They live in this tiny little world in this massive country. There are still many who plant their feet, drop their jaw, and just stare at us. Some will even come from down the street to stand by and stare. When we walk through a market place, if we see a stall that looks like it could use some custom - all deserted, no interest shown - we just go stand near it and in a few seconds the whole world gathers.

Hot! You have no idea! We are so shocked by the extremes, we were not expecting this. This is supposed to be when they get all their rain, and it hasn't shown up yet. Peter has just gone on his bike into Xiao Qiao, the local village to try to get us some veges, or at least potatoes and onions ... I hope he doesn't expire on the way. I just couldn't face it. There is a little shop quite close to the college where we buy eggs. (Actually we often buy them on the way home from our evening walk, the family is all sitting around outside on the pavement watching TV and we stop by to buy eggs...) We buy them by weight. We select them and put them into the flimsiest of gossamer plastic bags. About 15 makes a pound, and costs 6 Yuan ($1). Then they put the bag inside another and you carry them home ... carefully. We are glad its close by, because it’s quite tricky.

We find we eat a lot of eggs because there is often not much other (acceptable) protein available around here. We can buy very cheap very lean pork - really yummy - in the big shops in Zhengzhou, but it has to then be brought home via the stinking hot bus for an hour. They do sell meat in the village but it’s either killed in front of you - chickens - or sitting around as anonymous lumps out in the open on a chopping board...

We used to buy them (eggs) in the village and bring them home on the bike, but never managed to get them all home safely, even when we tried packing them into a plastic container and stuff. But the people travel around with 2, 3, 4 or more milk-crates full of eggs on the back of a bike - eggs just piled up loose in a milk-crate. We have no idea how they do it, on these bumpy roads too. So when we noticed this little shop close by with their crate of eggs sitting outside the front door ... remarkably, we have never had a bad one!

This morning Peter got up and turned on the pedestal fan that we have lying next to the computer, and the computer, and got the BSOD (blue screen of death). Oh no! Computer's "dead as a maggot" ... don't know why people say that because maggots aren't necessarily dead until you squash them ... but anyway. We turned the fan up to FULL speed and waited a while, and it all seems to be working again. Every moment is a victory!

Ok, so now Peter has just come home ... with hot bananas, hot tomatoes, hot apricots, hot potatoes, hot onions ... all of them raw! These things are so cheap, it’s just the hassle of getting them home.