Falling On My Head Like a Memory -Eurythmics

The rains have come again tonight. They started this weekend with a spectacular thunderstorm on Friday night.

It rains very hard, but not for very long. But since the city is so flat you can see the lightning and hear the thunder from miles away. On Friday we sat by the window with it open and took in the show. Sometimes the lightning looked like it was going to come right in the widow. The thunder was so loud we could hear every last crackle. It was like an explosion preceded by a crisp, series of crescendoing pops and cracks. It was as if the sky were made of thick ice and someone was trying to smash their way through it from the other side, driving huge fissures down through the clouds.

We are on the 18^th floor giving us a good vantage point being able to look out across a big section of the city skyline.

We live in a “serviced residence hotel” meaning we are in a hotel, but we have a kitchenette and living room. The people here are incredibly nice and the facilities are much more than I expected. There’s a pool and a gym and a restaurant (which is only open for breakfast.) Whenever I’m working out, any of the staff who walks by the glass gym doors stops to smile and wave to me, even though I’ve never even seen most of them.

Just as I was misled to believe that some people here would speak some English, I was also mistaken in thinking that I would be a giant in a land of short people. I am only a little taller than the average person in the street here. Saturday night one of the guys in the party we went to dinner with was at least two inches taller than me.

The way I understand it, people from the North tend to be historically taller, and people in the south shorter. Like most countries where populations stayed in the same place geographically, the different environments made certain physical traits dominant. The south tends to be more mountainous and forested, and the north is more open with deserts and plains.

I start Mandarin classes on Wednesday, and I am REALLY looking forward to it. I am getting tired of Heather and I being the only people who don’t speak the language.