Freezing my @$$ off!

I am freezing my @$$ off in Tonghua these days. For those of you who may not know this, most apartment complexes are heated by centralized heat generators usually fueled by coal. Well the central heating of most of Northern China (anything above the Yangtze River) gets turned off on April 15 of every year. This is fine in almost all areas as spring is usually arrived and so is the heat. But in Tonghua anyway, that is not the case…..

It was actually very warm here before the 15th but it looks like as soon as they turned off the heat, the weather turned. It has been very cold, rainy, and snowy here since then…

The fact that there is no heat in the houses certainly doesn’t make going home very attractive. At night, it must be less than 5’C in the houses so we just keep our winter jackets on until we go to bed.

I don’t know what turning back the heat on would entail but having an entire city freeze like this seems ridiculous. It’s pretty grim here these days…

The beaches of Thailand seem very attractive right now as I huddle under a blanket trying not to freeze to death! Spring, where are you? Why have you forsaken us?!