Banking Madness, Lunch with a fellow Quaker, and a Birthday Dinner All Under a Nasty, Nasty Layer of Smog

This smog grew worse over the weekend. Today, right after we finished a meeting at work, we looked out the window on the sky was a yellow-orange-end-of-the-world kind of color. I kept asking the local teachers if this was normal. Stephanie told me that this was normal for winter time. I just can't imagine living your whole life thinking smog like that is normal. I guess local Beijingers can't imagine having their sky look differently.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day at the bank waiting to transfer money. I waited for three hours and then left to meet my friend Jennifer who I went to Franklin High School with. She had been doing training for the organization that she works for all summer so it was nice to catch up with her. She works really, really hard for the people in her care and makes my life here seem so ridiculously easy!

I went back to the bank and waited another two and a half hours until I was seen. The bank closed at five, but luckily, they will see anyone who has made it into the building before five, which is pretty awesome. They stopped rolling the numbers on the screen and I got pretty lost for when it was my turn. Luckily, a nice couple next to me helped me out. The woman had been sitting next to me-real close- and was reading over my book over my shoulder for about half an hour. I said "hello" in Chinese, she said "hello" in English and that was about as far as our conversation went. I was the last customer out of the bank that day and I was lead out by the security officer through a few crazy hallways outside of the complex.

Today, I talked to my Mom and sis for a little bit before work at ten. All the students were at school making up for the holiday, so we had a training day about writing parent updates. I also got a chance to catch up on some of my grading and administration type work.

We left work to go to a Chinese restaurant for my birthday dinner in the pouring rain. I'm so excited to have rain, but from the looks of the smog over the past few days, I know that there is tons of grossness in those innocent looking raindrops. We had a good dinner, but someone started a heavy discussion about global warming that wasn't a cherry conversation, but interesting to hear from so many perspectives. One of my friends got a rough phone call from home which put a little damper on the festivities. Claire and Laura showed up quite a bit later when it was really started to pour. We ordered another round of beers and tried to wait out the rain. Eventually, we gave up and raced home. It was a birthday dinner that I will never forget.

Captain's Log: 22 Weeks