Canham's Voetspore in China: Winter in Hangzhou

Our first time experiencing WINTER in Hangzhou, China. As hot as it is during the autumn and summer months, it's the total opposite in the winter months. I think that this is because being down south, there is no central heating in the apartments and of course the rain. I could not believe that it rained this much in winter. The rain makes it cold and wet. I call it chilled to the bones cold, where you take longer to warm up. You definitely need more than your winter woolies to adventure outside.

Now going to school with this weather was not nice. First of all, its difficult to wake up and then I wished I was ten years old again so I can dress for work under the duvet on my bed. Ha Ha. Then standing outside the compound, waiting for a taxi can be a freezing experience. Even though I know I have dressed the different layers to keep warm, my nose and cheeks usually are numb by the time I get to my classroom. And of course, the school is next to a lake which makes it feel even more cold than when I left my apartment. I think the worst mentally is knowing you going to go through all this again before you leave the warmth of your apartment. Yes warmth, because we bought some oil heaters that helped during the winter months.

Once in my classroom I switch on the AC to hot and wait for it to warm up and because I didn't want the children to stay cold when they entered. You definitely have to layer because as it warms up so you have to strip the layers one by one. If you don't layer, you either overheat or the children complain its too cold.

During the cold days, my darling husband would make divine dinners that warmed not just the body but the soul as well.

But complaining about winter, all in all, it was beautiful when it snowed, twice, this year. We had a White Christmas and a White New Year. I love the beauty of fresh, untouched snowfall, the quietness that usually follows, and the sound of my own footsteps crunching over the white powdery ice.

We made it through the Winter. And as it heats up again after the winter, where I complain so much that it is so cold, I long for it during the summer months.

During the beginning of winter, we went on a field trip to the Pottery Museum and made our own creations out of clay. One of the negative points was they only had a cold tap to wash our hands and it was like was like washing you hands with fridge water. But the experience of making our own pottery out-weighed the cold.

We decorated our apartment this year. It started to feel like Christmas. We also invited Alicia and her family, who was visiting her over the Christmas holidays, to a full Christmas Lunch. It's at times like this that I wish that my daughters were with us so we can sit down as a family and celebrate together.

It was a sad when I heard that we didn't celebrate Christmas at my new school. The management said that the whole of China was clamping down on it. It was just strange to see other schools decorate their campuses to get into the mood of the Christmas spirit. Because I teach the international children, not the children in the bilingual school, I asked permission to at least decorate my classroom with a Christmas theme as the children in my class and their parents all believed in Christmas. I was given the go ahead and so I involved the children in Christmas crafts and decorations.

Even the children in my class started to feel like it was Christmas.