First, it’s hot and humid. Really hot, and really humid. There’s a two-hour break in the middle of each day so no one has to do anything in the middle of the day. Businesses are still open well past 9pm so people can eat and shop after the sun has gone down. Grown men walk around with their shirts folded up so their bellies are exposed. (Not all grown men. It seems maybe a bit déclassé, like those who hang out on the street a lot.) Every time my roommate Patti and I walk out of our hotel room, our glasses fog up. This picture she took of our hotel—it’s fuzzy because the lens fogged up.

Some of our classrooms have AC, and some, like mine, have only fans. Monday, (the first day of classes) I sweat so much I was no longer sticky, just soaked. The kids are not comfortable with this either. They get very tired, and green bean soup is brought around to each class in the afternoons. It is supposed to be a traditional Chinese way to lower your body temperature. It tastes kind of good, but I’m sorry it doesn’t have a more dramatic cooling effect.
(Note from the next day: Sometimes they bring sweet mushroom juice.)

When I was packing, I had a hard time deciding if I should bring my rain shell, an umbrella, or both, since it’s monsoon season here. Thinking if it was as hot as they said it would be (90’s on average), I’d rather be wet than hot, I left the raincoat at home. I have not missed it. I’ve noticed many people using umbrellas during the day to shade themselves from the sun, but so far it only has rained in the middle of the night. Apparently it’s quite loud when it hits the windows on the other side of our hotel, but Patti and I are always surprised when we hear at breakfast that it rained again.
(Haha! As I write this over my lunch break, it has just started to rain.)

Besides the heat, another noticeable feature of China is the large buildings. There are groups of tall apartment buildings everywhere. Maybe 20 stories or more. The first ones we saw as we drove to Shenzhen from the Hong Kong airport, I thought they looked like what I had seen of Soviet bloc housing in eastern Europe. Kind of boxy and not well cared for. But, having seen many more, some are dreary and unkempt, and others are modern with interesting architecture. I’m pretty sure I have not seen any single-family homes at all, but there are clusters of hundred- if not thousand-family buildings everywhere. I’ll try to get some better pictures of them.

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