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It’s 6 a.m. and the sun has not yet risen over Wuhan. The sky is charcoal blue and the air in my apartment is cool. The cleaner came two days ago and it still surprises me that this dust-free dwelling is my own.

I gave up on a good night’s sleep about an hour ago and have been playing at damage control ever since. I’m one of those who should just stay awake once passing a certain threshold point in the night. If I slept now, I wouldn’t wake up until the afternoon. So I turn on the lights and open the curtains and rest—but don’t sleep.

I’ve been sick for two weeks and now a cold has set in. I’d like to know what became of my immune system during the past month. I sit here and eat one of my precious packets of oatmeal brought with me from America and listen to the workers sweeping the street below.

There are so many things that I want to share but can’t. I love this country. I love the kindergarten below my apartment—waking up from afternoon naps to the sound of children playing. I love my students’ faces when I call them by name. Ivan said it once when I said “Hi Ivan” as she walked into class. “You know me?” she asked. “Of course I know you!” I replied. “I am happy of that,” she said. Sometimes my heart overflows.

There are so many things…and those things are all that I want to write about. Please forgive the lack of content in postings lately—maybe someday when I live in the US again, I will share all these thoughts that are bursting from my heart. Until then, I’ll try to come up with some of the crazy anecdotes of life in China that are now routine occurrences in my weeks and months. A chicken foot poking out of someone’s purse in a shopping mall. A taxi driver pointing at me and saying “you are a foreigner” (in Chinese) about 5 times in a row. The hats from our travel agent…

Until then, I’m going to go teach and then crawl into bed for a nice looonng nap!