For the most part since we've arrived in August the weather was better than we had anticipated. We came too late for the hot and wet July. August was hot and humid as expected but nothing you wouldn't experience in Kansas City about the time football two a days were starting. Then fall came and we had sunshine and cool but pleasant temperatures until the December holiday. Except for smoggy days here and there we thought the dreary weather was just an exaggeration.
Here we are in February and I'm beginning to feel like I'm stuck in the film Ground Hog Day. Everyday its cloudy and gloomy. It hasn't rained a lot or been too bitter cold but is just a plain flat grey sky the whole day. This isn't a cloudy sky or pretty sky with all sorts of shades of grey. There is very little wind to give life to trees. It just looks like someone put a grey tarp over the city. Last week on Wednesday I was walking to the market after school and I looked up and saw the sun through the clouds. It looked like the moon and you could just make it out as its brilliant rays were nearly all blocked by the clouds. I grabbed my camera to take a picture so I could prove to Bri the sun still rose and set each day. In the seconds it took me to turn the camera on....the sun was gone.
Last Friday was forecasted to be partly cloudy. Teachers starting talking about the forecast on Monday! It was like if your team was playing in the Super Bowl. (Not that I would know about that personally) The possibility of sun on Friday was all I could think about...yet I didn't want to talk about it too much for fear of jinxing it. Friday morning the sun broke through and I felt like a puppy ready to leave its crate. I literally smashed my face against my classroom window as my students chuckled. I guess some of them have grown used to Mother Nature's attack on Shanghai each January and February. One of my classes joyously received the days lecture from the back of the room. I drew on the windows with dry erase markers so we could all enjoy the suns rays shining in to the room but still get our work accomplished. Saturday and Sunday I walked all over Shanghai because the high pressure front had cleared all of the clouds for TWO WHOLE DAYS!
I just needed to be outside in the sun so I found excuses to go somewhere and then I'd walk. I suffered the affects Saturday afternoon. Not shin splints, bubble guts. I have this problem when I walk, I see food or smell food and I eat it. I look at it as stimulating the world economy. Four breakfasts later....bubble guts. It was worth it though. That's a price I'm willing to pay for sunshine and too many dumplings.
As if the world were mocking us, Monday brought back the grey sky. The mundane grey sky is all we've seen this week and all we're planning to see in the 10 day foreseeable future. At least there might be rain...
In high school I always thought it would be fun to live in the northwestern U.S. for awhile. Rainy days were so pleasant and relaxing. The air smells so clean after rain. Wouldn't living in Seattle be neat? I'd sit in coffee shops, read books and watch it rain. I've changed that tune. Oh what I would do to walk out the door to the school in Bethune and get pierced with some 30 mph wind and a -1 F windchill. I'd rather have my breath stolen in an instant than have it seep out of me slowly, dreary day after day, like a week old balloon. I miss the Eastern Colorado winds that you need to lean into before walking out the door or else they knock you over when they hit you. I miss having to check the weather daily because you don't know what to wear or when to pray for a snow day. I've gone weeks without checking the weather here because it never changes, but now I check daily just so I'm ready if the sun peeks through.
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