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2018, November 7

Yes, it is election day in USA! A very good thing. However, Mary and I have elected to vote absentee and elected to be in China one more time! We have been here for a week and a half and have visited many, many friends and former students.
It really is amazing how this place has become second home for me and Mary as well. When I first came to China I figured, right, I teach, I experience the culture, the art, the food — but never in my dreams did I think I would become so attached to this place and these people.
It is still difficult becoming reacquainted with and accustomed to taking a shower with the sink and toilet in the same space, having to buy or boil water to drink or brush ones teeth or hang our clean laundry in the apartment with electric heaters and fans to dry them all (there are very few dryers used here)!

But none of this matters…

This place, these people somehow become home and family, respectively. Neither Mary nor I can successfully explain our love of this place and these people. One needs to be blessed enough to be honored to experience all this…all this …Amazing Stuff!

The following pictures and texts are testament to my aforementioned entry…

This first photo is the view from our studio apartment window – yep! this is China…The clash of two societies, worlds and cultures. China is ‘rough and tumbly’ (as you can see from this window view) and it is ‘modern, clean and vibrant’ (as you can see from the second photo)! Like I mentioned way back in the beginning of this blog – an accurate description and definition of the clashing of China’s two worlds can be summarized olfactorily; when one strolls down a Chinese city street fully utilising very centimetre of space for person and vehicle – the aroma of the most wonderfully smelling food strikes one mightily and fourteen steps further on ones trek – the smell of sewer gas! A wonderful, wonderful place.

Stay Tuned………Still More To Come……….