Nov. 16, 2016
11:30 pm
Beijing, China
Hey,
So today’s blog post isn’t so much a post about my day, considering that only consisted of watching Chuck (thank you, Gretchen) and lesson planning. Instead, it’s more of a moment for me to make an announcement and tell you one thing about China.
First, my announcement. Any of the previous blog posts I have published that say something about adding a video when wifi gets better, well those have been updated. Unfortunately, something is wrong with my blog. I don’t think it’s the wifi anymore because the wifi in my apartment is much better than it was at the hotel and I’ve even tried to upload the videos at work. For some reason my blog is no longer letting me upload videos to my media. Until I can get that worked out, all of my videos are being posted on Youtube and then linked to the blog. For most of you, this doesn’t change anything. Just click play on the videos on the blog and presto you can watch them. I only mention this for three reasons. First, if you’re in China you will have to use a VPN in order to view these videos. Second, I want you to go and check out the videos from old blogs. Specifically Trusting in Peace and Moving In. Just follow these links to go watch. Third, I have a picture page (although I haven’t done a great job of updating it lately), so I’m going to start doing the same thing with videos on my Youtube page. I haven’t put more than these three up yet, but I will soon. My Youtube name is simply Kristen McKell. Feel free to check it out.
Now for my piece of Chinese, well Beijing, trivia. For those of you who don’t know, Beijing is at about the same latitude as Ohio. It can get pretty cold here during the winter and this is supposed to be the coldest winter in a while. To help with heating, the government provides central heating to all of the buildings in Beijing. It’s paid for in fees by the landlord, so it’s not an extra utility that the tenants have to pay. In fact, it’s illegal for a landlord to charge extra for central heating. I believe they do this to keep the city grid in check, but I’m not sure. So every year, central heating is provide from November 15 until mid March. As a result, my heat was supposed to be turned on yesterday. My landlord, though, didn’t turn it on for my room. I actually had to text one of the building managers today to ask him to turn it on for me. Now that it’s on, man is it warm in my room! I have a heater/ac unit that’s extra on top of the central heating that I’ve been using for the past couple weeks. I don’t even have that turned on and I’m sweating. The nice thing, though, is that when it does get really cold, I should be okay in the heating department.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got to say for today. Talk to you all more tomorrow.
Good night,
Kristen
P.S. My mom is sending a care package to me soon. If you’d like to include a letter or anything to send to me, send it to her and she can include it. I’m not actually expecting any of you to do this, I just thought I’d give a shout out anyway.
