Yes, it is hot here and thankfully our new A/C is working wonderfully. Our weather is much like the weather in Florida. We don't get the thunder storms developing in the afternoons but we do have rain a lot of times. The winter even is rainy. The skies are cloudy and foggy in the winter but start to clear up in the summer. Spring and fall are beautiful and cool. We have had many beautiful blue skies the past month or two. I do miss the blue skies at times when it is overcast. When it rains, I use an umbrella. We have to get to where we are going and sometimes we arrive wet. My husband really hates it when he gets his shoes wet but that is part of life here.
Yes, we have a TV. Last year I bargained with the owner of our apartment for one. I tutored her little girl in English for a few months to get her to put one in the apartment. But I rarely watch the local stations. They are all in Chinese except two channels. Those come from Hong Kong and do have English BBC and some English shows like Desperate Housewives (yuck!) but not much worth watching. The shows on the Chinese channels are strange. Mostly dramas dealing with sad, violent, or angry topics. I miss my comedy shows. They advertise like in USA on TV but the commercials are repetitive. Few are about cars. Mostly products for the skin or health products. One commercial about a camera was repeated 10 times in a row. That is when I turned it off. We brought DVD's with us and I have a VPN so I can watch stuff on Hulu. The news here is very guarded and cannot be trusted to be telling the truth or the whole story but I guess that is about every where. I usually check the internet news on Yahoo to see what's going on. Is there a war in the Middle East? I do feel news deprived. Very few Chinese are actually interested in what is happening outside of China. Except for when it comes to business and money.
Advertising is every where. On trains, in elevators, on buses, etc., they have TV monitors with running ads. Ads are also on the walls, the buses, inside the trains (sometimes the whole train car is covered from floor to ceiling with an ad), and recently they have been running ads on a monitor on the inside of the tunnels outside the train as we speed by. Now THAT is pretty neat to see. I will try to capture that on camera on day. China is pushing commercialism big time. At least in this city. In October we will be heading to Beijing and will see if it is any different there.
I guess that is about all for now. Thank you for checking on us. We are still alive and kicking. I wish you all good health and peace.
Love and hugs....Cindy