Winter?

Fresh off a trip from the heat of Malaysia, we landed in what almost felt like winter here in Xiamen.

Sunday night we got in around 23:30 and there was a chill in the air and a fog that had enveloped Xiamen. We've never seen a fog like this here, but we just chalked it up to the fact that we are never up this late...

The other day when I left for work it was chilly enough to make me think about bringing a jacket the next day. Yeah, it has dropped down to around 17C in the early mornings and evenings. It must be something about the temperature here as this time I'm noticing the cold, back home we would still be in shortsleeves at that temperature, and the time that I spent out in California I didn't really get cold in the winter and found it funny to see all the locals bundled up in their big winter jackets.

One thing that is different here is that that Chinese pretty much always live in the outside temperature, at work the windows are always open even though the workers are all bundled up in their jackets, and as we were told most apartments don't have heat. We even learnt that in the summer most places still leave the windows open, I especially had a hard time getting used to working at my computer in 30C+ with the high humidity. Even way back when we were looking at apartments we were told that the Chinese seldom use the air-conditioning and that it was only something that the westerners used...

I don't know where I'm going with all this other than I'm suddenly worried that I, and by that I mean we, may actually be cold when we return to the northern latitudes of North America, so go easy on us if we complain.

But we are looking forward to seeing some snow and actually getting a feel for the holidays. This cold makes you think fall, not Christmas.