With no school for 6 weeks, I’m going to try and develop a consistent schedule of exercise and activity. Before breakfast, I try to do some stretches, along with pushups to keep my back from becoming a problem. The pool opens at 9:30 am, so I try to be in the water, swimming no later than 10 am. I’m only doing 900 meters right now, but will lengthen it out to at least 1600 meters over the next several weeks. To relieve the boredom (back and forth), I’m counting strokes and laps in Chinese.

After swimming, I usually kill some time on the computer or eating lunch, waiting for Lilly’s mom to arrive to clean. When she gets started, I climb on the bike and ride the 3 kilometers over to the table tennis club. The temps this week have reached “highs” of 44 degrees F. The wind isn’t blowing, so I actually begin to sweat when we get “warmed up”. I never saw myself playing in weather this cold.

I’ve been over there so much lately I’m becoming a “regular”. I must be getting better. Some of the more experienced players are offering to hit with me. There’s the occasional player who can speak a little English. It’s a nice change to the usual scenario of the silence around my table. All around there are people talking trash to each other and laughing. Since I’ve always lived in a “suburban” environment, it’s fun to experience an “urban” setting. The same thing probably goes on in downtown areas throughout the US. I just haven’t been around it before. There are lots of retired people here looking for ways to keep busy and moving.

Judy’s days contain the usual “ups and downs” associated with teaching. They took pictures this week of the entire elementary school, students and faculty, outside (it was 25 degrees when they took the picture). In the US, it would have been cancelled for warmer weather.  The musical rehearsed after school on Tuesday instead of Friday because of a big basketball tournament this weekend for both boys and girls teams. In a small school like this, the students are committed to lots of different activities, just like most small schools in the US. It takes a cooperative effort to figure out how to share students (and facilities).