Long Underwear season has started in Beijing.  All of my children are now wearing long underwear.  The weather is cold, and despite it only being the end of October, I am potentially considering wearing long underwear myself.  You'd think that a girl from Michigan would be fine wearing with cold weather.  In fact I love cold weather very much, and life without piles of snow is sad.  However, in China the heat doesn't turn on until November 15, and meanwhile all the doors and many windows are left open.  The other thing about being in Beijing is that we are near the desert so we get lots of cold winds coming into our city.  Probably the only place that is warm right now in Beijing is the bus and the subway.  With so many people packed inside, the body heat that is given off makes things comfortable.  I seriously need to go warm clothes shopping, as right now I am being extremly chinese in my behavior of wearing the three sweaters I currently own on a rotating basis.  Two of them are not all that warm either.  Mittens are also in order.  Oddly enough, most of my children don't own mittens, even in the dead of winter.  Anyways, for those of you who are further North than me, I give you props for dealing with not having heat and it being colder than it is here. 

So i never was able to post some pictures from the field trip our school took two weeks ago. It was a blast, we went to the coutryside and were able to pick sweet potatoes in a giant field with over three to five hundred kindergarteners.  Both our big and little kindergartens went, as well as did another school.  It was quite the event.  Most of the really little ones just dug in the dirt and didn't really get many potatoes, so really it was the teachers doing most of the work.  By the end of the massive frenzy we ended up with sacks and sacks of giant sweet potatoes.  Culturally the most interesting part of the trip was by far the bus ride.  I rode with my little three year old students and in china when they have to go to the bathroom, that means NOW.  Of course the teachers are prepared for this and literally everywhere we travel with them (even the playground) little plastic buckets are provided for their use. The remains is then dumped out of the window when we stop (whether that be a light or on the side of the road).  I had a discussion on the bus with a teacher about what we do in America--go before hand and then have to wait.  She pretty much summed up their opinion of our way of doing things, " So uncomfortable!".  I'll add some pictures soon but here is one to give you an idea.

So yesterday was mid-autumn festival here in China.  All week long most chinese took a holiday and enjoyed themselves.  We were blessed to be off school so I was able to take a bit of a holiday as well.  It has been a time to reconnect with old friends and time to make some new ones.  We rang in the chinese national day last Sunday by visiting Tiannamen at night after youth group with BICF.  It was a good time had by all, though crazy with crowds.  Then on Tuesday I left by way of boat (FYI much easier to get boat tickets somewhere than train tickets) for Dalian by way of Tianjin with a city mate and met up with the lovely team from Siping which was a riot.  The twelve of us kicked around town and even got to visit the beach.  I was even able to snag a train ticket home to Beijing lastnight and arrived this morning.  Dalian is a nice city, but I think probably my favorite part of the whole experience (besides seeing the beach)was fellowshiping with some great people.  One couple was actually from Hudsonville who I had met in August.  They are tons of fun and oddly enough many years back I used to work with his sister at Pottery Barn.  How's that for a small world.  Go all the way across the globe and hang out with people from home.  I hope I'll be able to hang with them more in the future.  Warmly Welcome to the Siping team if they ever want to visit Beijing.