Spring has sprung

Winter had its ups and downs. When I arrived in fall I was told on several occasions how miserable winter in Hangzhou was. I heard over and over how bone chilling cold it gets here. I began to prepare myself for the worst. Here's the lesson (wouldn't it be great if you always walk away from reading my blog a tad bit more enlightened); you
can't always trust someone else's perspective. It's cold here, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't make life here miserable. Living in the north, yeah that may be miserable, but this is just a winter. It's great that I experience this. That way when I raise a family in Southern California and my kids complain about weather ill hit em with "when I lived in China I had to walk to work in the snow, uphill both ways.”

Last week it was 80 degrees one day then it dropped to 50 degrees the next day.I'm so excited for spring! I know it will be a bit rainy for a couple of months. The other night I walked by a Chinese couple holding hands and couldn't help but notice that the young mans sweat pants had a "sad face" embroidered on the crotch. I'm going to assume the girl he was holding hands with was his girlfriend and I immediately felt bad for her. What a diss to her! Was he wearing the scarlet letter for "unsatisfied?" And if so, should we direct the blame for his unhappy privates on her. If they break up she may have a hard time finding another boyfriend.

I was once on a bus and the driver took a personal call. Obviously I don’t really know if it was a personal call because most of the Chinese I understand is classroom language. So hopefully it wasn’t a personal call, but it definitely seemed like it was a personal call. Which is so ridiculous that while he is responsible for the lives of everyone on the bus he’s chattin about who knows what. #noruleschina

I feel like the best things happen to me on the bus. The other day an old woman looked right at me and gave me this semi evil/knowing laugh. It was as if she knew something I didn’t. I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or a little more aware of what’s around the corner.

One of the other most interesting places is the gym. An older woman put her bra over her long sleeve top? I tried it.

I was walking to the gym two days ago and the backs of me legs felt super cold. I reached back and water was dripping out of my backpack. I opened it up and my iPhone was swimming in the little pool created in my backpack. The phone is resting in dry rice and I'm hoping for a recovery. Everyone please say a little prayer for my phone. It has forced me to read more so I guess there's the silver lining. I have become very dependent on the translator app in class though.