Rough week..

This week has been sort of tough on me. Mainly because its an American holiday and I hear about everyone in the states going to be with their families. Makes me miss mine. Although, holidays in my family have lost their luster in the past several years. I don 't know if it's because we are all older now or because of the obvious void in the Freed family. It's like we sometimes avoid getting together because we don't want deal with the fact that we are incomplete and its a holiday. Its not that we are trying to avoid each other, don't get me wrong, we love the hell out of each other. Its just the holidays are when the entire family unit is supposed to be in the same place, celebrating together, I miss that, I want that. The problem is, the what I want is what we had 10 years ago, before we knew dad was even sick. I'll never get that, I know this. So here now are my options: Take my brothers lead and begin a family (which is odd because the older I get the more I think I want that), continue to be a wondering soul and live in the present, or hit the goldmine and find a medium between the two. Oh the choices one makes.
Anywho, I said that this blog was going to be about my time in China and not about my personal trials and tribulations. Just been thinking allot lately.
Winter has finally arrived in Jinzhou and it gets pretty damn cold. I have some decent layers to put on but nothing super heavy. I left all of that at home due to its weight in my luggage. I may have to cough up some cash and buy a proper coat. Now I'm faced with the decision, do I splurge and spend 1/3 or my monthly salary on a coat that will last, or be cheap and get one that will probably fall apart after 1 winter.
I finally started Chinese lessons last week. Its a pretty sweet language, I'm excited to learn it. I've only had one lesson and there are already several things that are sticking in the ol noggin. I'm pretty happy about that. Hopefully I'm one of those people who picks up languages fairly easily. I still know allot of Spanish from my high school classes and that was over a decade ago. It helps to have a good teacher, which I do. Her English name is Jesse and she teaches a few of the foreign staff here. I have decided to only learn the language at this point. I may work my way up to the characters later.
In high school this week I made a lesson describing the Thanksgiving holiday and dumbed it down as much as I could. They were still clueless. Although in every class I asked them what day it was, and at least one person knew it was Thanksgiving. I basically read a children's version of the story of Thanksgiving to them, making sure to throw in a little history about how we eventually treated the Native Americans, couldn't leave that part out. I was basically talking to myself because no one was listening to what I was saying. It was kinda disheartening really, being ignored by that amount of people, Chinese teacher included.
Oh well, its times like those when you just take a deep breath and shake it off because if I let stuff like that get under my skin, its going to be a long year. Whats the saying....." The character of a man cannot be determined during times of calmness and serenity but during times of conflict and controversy".