The End of Summer

This is, by far, my favorite part of summer...the END OF IT! I got up before sunrise this morning, felt the cool breeze from the open windows, drank a pot of fresh coffee--Starbucks beans freshly ground--my dog by my side on the sofa with her mouth all scrunched up like a person who hasn't quite woken up yet--wondering why we had to get up so early this morning--just to write to you. We are not quite up before the roosters, as I heard them before I got out of bed. The temperatures are in the 60's right now, with the high today in the high 70's or low 80's. The children went back to school two days ago. I just LOVE this time of year.

It was a really long, hot summer. Summer here is rainy season, so the humidity is always really high. I feel like I sweated all the water out of my body every day. We ran a summer English workshop at the university for two weeks in August, and I was up there all day every day in an administrative role, without the benefit of air-conditioners (but we still had to wear teacher clothes and hosiery, so it was uncomfortable and made the heat even more unbearable). There were severe thunderstorms on a daily basis that lasted about an hour each time; some days we had three or four different thunderstorms scattered throughout the day. There was a four-day taxi strike during the English workshop, so getting across town was really, really difficult. We have bikes, but due to the thunderstorms, it was dangerous to ride them. It was so hot that even my dog who LOVES to go outdoors couldn't bear the heat and neither one of us could bear to drag ourselves up to the 5th floor on the stairs after her little walks. At the end of August, I traveled to Thailand which is in the tropics, and it was much cooler there than where I live in China. When I got back from Thailand, the summer weather had turned a corner (as it always does this time of year), the humidity is gone, and I feel like a real person again. I wish I could bottle this weather. God is Lord of the weather and has a reason for it all that supercedes my individual tastes, but I am thankful for the reprieve.

I'm so glad the children have returned to school and life will settle back in to "normal." The downside to a return to classes is that in the two-block distance from my apartment to the main part of town there are at least four major schools, and the traffic jams last for up to 8 hours a day. Parents drop off their kids in the morning, pick them up for lunch, drop them back at school after lunch--there is a 2-hour lunch break, then pick them up later in the day (five o'clock-ish). Due to traffic, the students schedule is staggered so that first graders get out first, then second graders, etc., making the congestion go on for hours and hours at a time. There is no other way for me to get into town though. I try to plan my trips down those two blocks for times when I know the kids are in class. It doesn't always work though.

The photo is of soldiers at Tiananmen Square (Beijing) protecting the first lady of Sri Lanka who was in town in August.

Well, I better run for now. I'll be in touch again soon!