Brrr

It is cold.

I know it has been cold in the US lately and many places broke records for how cold it was a few weeks ago. The temperature was much lower than it has been here.
But it is cold here.

People always ask us, "What's the weather like there?" I always say that it is about like it is here (TN)... But.....
It feels colder. It really does. Let me see if I can explain it...
Are you cold right now? No, not really. It is cold outside? How may layers of clothes are you wearing?

Right now I am inside, and I am wearing wool long john pants, and long wool socks under my jeans. (on really cold days, I might wear two pairs of long johns) On my top, I am wearing a thermal top, a long sleeve tee shirt, and a fleece sweatshirt. I am still a little chilled.

I own a couple pieces of clothing that were always too hot to wear in America. One of these is an acrylic fleece sweat shirt. It works just fine here, actually I usually wear two shirts under it!

I promise it FEELS colder here. It is wet (another rainy day) but it is more than just that. You can never really get away from the cold here. Our apartments are made of concrete. There is very little wood and NO insulation. The floor is either tile, or warmer wood, and that is on top of a concrete slab. It is a little like living in a cave. We have heaters but they rarely work like the ones in America. We do not have central heating so the bathrooms can be quite frigid.

In America, we leave our nice warm houses with carpet, insulation, and central heat and walk in the bitter cold to our cars. We turn on the heater and drive to a heated building or store. We are outside for very little time.

In China, it takes longer to go anywhere, so we are outside for longer. The larger stores usually have some heating, but most smaller stores do not.

Almost all the classrooms do not have heat. When we teach in the winter time, we never take our coat off, and sometimes we keep our gloves on. I really feel sorry for the students because they usually just sit there, and that gets really cold. At least the teacher gets to move around.

That being said, we are blessed. We do have a heater in most of the rooms. We have lots of warm clothes that we can layer up. We usually do not HAVE to be outside when the weather is at its worst. Not many people are as blessed. I am thankful.

P.S.
We are going to Beijing next week, it is much further north. But they say that the cold is dryer so it feels different. We shall see.