Hello, everyone!

As you know from the last posting, MSN’s “My Space” will soon be gone.  Those of us using My Space blogs coud either be transferred (migrated) to WordPress or  deleted.  My choice was to try for Word Press but in China, I could never migrate as the screen would always come up in error.

After returning to the States for my Chinese New Year holidays (January 15 to February 9), I learned that Word Press is blocked in China.  However, using your own domain might work with a link to Word Press.  Thus after paying a mere $25.00 for the entire year, I now have my own domain, connieinchina.org.

Today, I am heading back to China.  Whether I can continue to use this site or not in the country is still going to be a mystery until I arrive.  I’ll cross my fingers that all goes well and you will be able to continue reading about my life and Little Flower’s in little Longzhou.

As for this visit to the States, it’s been packed full of activities.  As a former university swimmer at Eastern Illinois University, I was thrilled to not only attend a home meet at my alma mater in Charleston, IL, but also to swim several times in my old pool during the weekends.  I even met up with my former swimming coach, Ray Padovan, who is now retired, for a walk down memory lane as we chatted about the past.

Another highlight was giving the message in two of our United Methodist churches, one being my home church and the other, the “country” church a few miles from town.  I even made it to the Baptist’s after-school club  to talk about Chinese New Year and my role as an American English teacher and a Christian in the small town, Longzhou. 

 Then we had my brother’s law partner, Joe, who invited me as his speaker for Rotary.  It was a bit of a struggle to get myself up and presentable at 6:30 a.m. but it was well worth it to see many familiar faces and share more about China. 

Of course, there was plenty of time spent with my parents and our little Sichuan street-stray rescue, disabled Lao-lao (Old-old).  He’s been in America now for 1 1/2 years, this being his second Illinois winter.   His former life in Chengdu never had him experience such harsh temperatures or weather conditions.  All this snow and ice  didn’t make our toothless, jawless Chihuahua very happy.    But spring is coming soon so maybe my mother will be able to get him out for his daily walks in another month or so.

My own dog, Little Flower, is currently with her Chinese sitter and I’m sure she’s been suffering as well.  I continued to check temperatures in Chengdu, where she is staying, and saw quite a few days of light snow as well as temps in the 30s.  Most people in Sichuan don’t have indoor heating, merely tiny dual air-con units that don’t do much of anything if turned on, so I can imagine she was shivering away most of the time in her temporary home. 

That’s soon to change, though!  After yet another Net search, I found out that Guangxi Province is now deep into Spring weather, in the 70s by day and 50s by night.  That’s more for us!  I’m sure Longzhou, being far south, is even warmer.  When our college classes start up on February 21st, I’ll be back in my summer clothes again.

Before closing, I just want to welcome all of you to the new site.  Thank you so much for checking in and let’s hope there will be more blogs in the future using this same space.

Ping An (peace!), everyone!

corneliamw@yahoo.com