I found the first signs of fall the other day. When I was riding my bike into town. Of course, the street sweepers were rather busy again, trying to gather all the fallen leaves as soon as they hit the ground. But I, for at least a brief moment in life, was able to uphold the illusion that there is actually something like fall in these parts of the world …
Let me take you into town again today. To the vegetable market. A friend wanted to know that market (which usually is closed whenever I get there), but the one thing you can get there is all-natural peanut butter among a couple of other things. Now, this is not the place to talk about hygiene (as you can tell from the picture), but it’s always a lot of fun to watch them fill up a jar of fresh peanut butter, taken from a huge bowl in which it has been produced. Of course, the peanut butter is so natural that you have to add salt and whatever else you think necessary, in order to make it more delicious. But in my eyes, it naturally is a great treat!
Well, you know how dearly I love me that little mountain we get to go to every once in a while. I usually tell you all about it, whenever I’ve had another chance to get away from town. And we like this mountain for specific reasons. For example, the fact that only few people find their way there. Or that you don’t have to pay money to go for a hike. Or that the trails used to be all natural trails – no stairs, no pavements. Used to be … Because now, there are stairs. Now, there are paved walkways. Now there are more and more visitors crowding (and unfortunately littering) the place. And my little heart is broken. Because it looks like soon our mountain, the only place where we could actually find a little nature around town, will be just another tourist spot in China – overrun with people; occupied by sellers who want to make business; and with paved walkways that take away all the fun of hiking up rocky trails. Sometimes I simply …
A bike ride to the airport is always a fun trip. Today, however, it was especially worthwhile going there for at least two reasons: Not only did the students love getting so close to the planes, but because of the holiday, incoming planes were especially frequent. Sooo, I couldn’t have chosen a better day to invite students and friends to join me on a field trip. And though we had to deal with a couple of adversities on our way, I assure you, they were having just as much fun as I. And that’s the plane truth.
So, like I told you, we went mountain climbing yesterday. And while that in itself usually is an exciting event, the highlight of the day for me was our stop at the bee keeper’s. It’s this old man and his wife, who camp out at the foot of the mountain where they keep rows of beehives. And for the first time in my life, I was able to see how honey is “made.” After all, quite some of us purchased a jar of pure, all natural honey, and so the old man had to get more honey from the honeycombs. And we? We get honey deluxe – all inclusive that is. Even the extra portion of protein, since our honey comes with bee wings, bee legs and all that other good stuff that makes this honey so special!
At the Bee Keeper’s
Everyone (we take) loves to go to the mountain not far from town where we can have adventures, nature, and lots of rock climbing. I’m no exception. So, I took a group of my students out on a little trip. But this time, I was in for a little disappointment. They are turning the bottom part of our trail into I-know-not-what – they say it’s going to be a water reservoir. But whatever they are doing, I’m just really sad, because they took down a huge part of the mountain, are breaking apart rocks and whatever else is in their way, and completely change what was so lovely about “our” mountain. And if you look at the pictures and wonder why I’m fussing since there’s no sign of anything out of the ordinary – that’s only because in defiance of what’s going on, I didn’t feel like taking pictures of the destruction. My photographer-heart simply ignored this part of our hike. Anyhow, the good news is, the majority of our nature retreat is still intact, …
I went into town the other day, and I realized something: Christmas has definitely arrived. Even here. How I know? Because I found this: Need I say more? Talking about an overdose of Christmas stuff. Looks like they really want to make sure you don’t miss the point. Which means that the stuff should end up in people’s houses sooner or later – though I can’t say I’ve seen much of that yet. But in the public places you can definitely tell: Santa Clause is coming to town! PS. Which reminds me, I still haven’t shown you our in-house decorations yet. Will get to that, I’ll do my best to make sure, because you don’t want to miss that! 😉
Yep. It’s Christmas season. Even in China. How I know? Because you can see it in the streets. Well, not every street, of course, but certain places do show. Like this one, where we went shopping today. Now, I’m not going to start a debate here whether the stuff they sell is pretty, or worth buying or anything. As we all know, tastes differ – widely at times. So, I’ll let you make your own decision as to whether you like what you see, or not. Here. Maybe this will make your decision process a little easier: Anyways, going shopping into town, we got to see lots of Christmas stuff, and some pretty impressive decoration, too. Like the giant Christmas tree which was so purple that it hurt my eyes; or this castle that was so magnificent that we had to have our picture taken with it: Still not in Christmas mood yet? Well, that’s not my fault then. Showing you all these Christmas pics, I’ve done all I could to get you there, haven’t …
Every year the Freshman students have to spend their first month at university doing military training. That involves hours of exercising, usually in sun and heat (something that especially some girls dislike, because they like to keep their skin as untanned as possible). In any case, this year’s military training has been reduced to a minimum so far, since it’s been raining and pouring every single day for pretty much the last two weeks. Lucky for those girls, I’d say, though I haven’t figured out yet what they do when their training is cancelled due to bad weather …
