I've never been this cold... ever

So apparently China doesn't have indoor heating. Well, at least I know that any city south of the Yangtze River doesn't have heating. Which unfortunately includes Nanjing. My Chinese family believes that indoor heating is bad for your health and that you should open all the windows in the house to improve the air circulation. It snowed yesterday. And yes, our windows were still wide open. My classmate, who is also in a homestay, said you could see his breath in the house. However, this is also the same classmate who doesn't have a mattress, he sleeps on a plank of wood. Luckily our apartment wasn't that cold, but I was still shivering pretty much the whole night. I dread taking showers. And I used to complain that my family kept the thermostat at 67 degrees...

So it snowed yesterday, one of the earliest times of the year that it's ever snowed in Nanjing. I found out that this apparently was caused by China's "Weather Modification Team" that fires rocket shells full of silver iodide into the sky in order to create rain. This is a common practice in Beijing and other parts of China that frequently suffer from droughts. This year, a cold front came into Beijing right after they shot the silver iodide, and it caused a huge snowstorm on November 2nd. Apparently, Nanjing is just now feeling the after effects of this as the precipitation is moving south. I'm not really sure how all of this works, so google it if you have time! China's "Weather Modification Team" also diverts clouds on days of importance, including October 1st, for the National Day Parade.

So Obama's in town. Well, not my town, but in Shanghai and Beijing this week. Pretty exciting stuff. I didn't even know about it until my family was talking about it at dinner last night so I watched the video of his speech on CNN.com. Although I thought that Obama was most definitely stepping on China's toes, it was certainly interesting and I think everybody would agree that the US-China relationship is the most important in the world. Check it out: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/16/china.us.relations/index.html

It was also funny because in Chinese class today we just happened to study that same proverb that Obama "quoted." For those that are curious, it's "温鼓而知新 wen gu er zhi xin" which is usually translated as "Understand the present by reviewing the past." We all agreed that it wouldn't have been that hard for Obama to have learned how to say that in Chinese.