Pumping up your tires.

My favorite part of riding a bicycle is when I've been riding around for awhile on low tires. I finally get my bike to the sport shop and have them pump them up for me. Suddenly, biking is the easiest thing ever. I go further. I go faster. I feel like an Olympian out there!

It's kind of like life. Every now and then we get a bit low and end up working twice as hard to go half the distance. Why do we do this? Why do we insist on driving on low tires? Part of the reason is because we are too lazy. Even worse, some of us don't even know that our tires are low. We are totally unaware to the signs and feedback from our bodies when they require maintenance. I'm not saying that you should go to the doctor and ask them to give you some botox and a pacemaker, but you can pump your tires in other ways.

Anwer has been in India for about ten days already because his Chinese New Year holiday is longer than mine. We've been separated by oceans on various occasions since the beginning of our relationship, but this was different. This was my first time being alone in China. I spent some time rediscovering Shannon time. I had to be more purposeful in my pursuits. I took a bicycle journey to Yangcheng Peninsula. I got lost. I found my way. I pretended I could read Chinese signs. I spent time skyping friends and reconnecting with friends from long ago. This did mean I was up later than usual because of time zone differences, but I still felt refreshed and inspired.





Keep your tires at optimal pressure.

A proper bike lane with kilometer markers, lanes, and rule following.

Why haven't I visited here before?

I didn't get peed on by a monkey.

In a day that rivaled the time I got peed on by a monkey and glittered in the same twelve hours, today sucked.

First period began with biathlon training with my 9th graders. Things are as fun as you can imagine with a group of 9th graders in the pool that range from great swimmers to doggy-paddlers. I had everyone get out of the pool to talk about something and have them watch some other swimmers demonstrate. One girl was sitting and said she was dizzy. Another girl mentions that this happens to her often. As I was talking to the girl, asking her questions, she passes out in my arms. Her eyes glaze over, and I think she's about to have a seizure. It was the scariest 15 seconds of my life as I shouted her name to get her to wake up. It felt like minutes had passed before she woke up. While this is happening, I'm also dealing with an extremely different level of emergency recognition from my Chinese lifeguards. I try to tell them to call the nurse, an ambulance, and they tell a student, who translates it for me, that they are not allowed to call.

Luckily, I had another teacher in the pool and called him over to help. A student had already gone to get the nurse, but this was before the girl passed out, so the level of emergency was at a much lower level when the student left. The girl woke up, but she couldn't see or hear well. I was so scared she was going to pass out again. I just kept talking to her and waiting for someone with more life saving skills to come. Time seemed to be moving much slower, and I had no idea what my first aid training had taught me to do in this situation. I was trying to summon people who knew more than me, but it wasn't working. The nurse came, and everything was beginning to be more under control. It was scary. I was distraught.

A couple classes later, I had gathered a sense of calm and was less likely to yell at children when this happened: I called over my 6th grade students to sit next to a badminton court so I could demonstrate something. As I was talking to a couple students, a student literally slid into my legs from behind me. (He was apparently trying to just slide in and sit, but I was moving as he was sliding.) I did a bunch of nascar maneuvers to not fall or crush the student. I ended up banging my knee up in the process. I did not kill this student.

THEN! I came back to my office and was drinking from my water bottle, and I began to choke on a piece of plastic. A small tooth-size piece of plastic was lodged in my throat. Is this real life? Is someone trying to murder me?  

Suzhou Winter

Coming to Suzhou after being in Minnesota was a laugh in winter's face. It was 60 degrees when I landed in Shanghai. What a joke. When the semester began again, my Southern Hemisphere colleagues were talking about how cold it was. Puh-leez. It was mid 40's. MID 40's!! What a bunch of cracker jacks.

Here's what's happening in this chilling winter:

This old man isn't letting winter slow him and his roller blades down.

It's strawberry season. $1/pound-give or take depending on size and quality of the strawberry.

More weird animals are place randomly around malls.
Anwer looks really cold, but it's only because we drove the E-bike. 

Oh hey, Mr. Walton!

What society is.

It's hard to tell, but these cars are lined up for car washes... from the swampy area nearby.
They bring their own buckets and supplies and just get it done.

Yankee Candle showed up to help with the odor issues in greater China.

It did snow very briefly the other day. I prayed really hard for a snow day, but no such luck.

Running in the dark.

I have always been a morning person. As an attempt at New Year Resolutions and beginning my training for the Great Wall Half-Marathon in May, I have been running before school. The weather has been ideal--low 40s. I only run when the pollution is below 150, which has been 3 days this week. I leave around 5:10 AM, and it's dark, really dark, sometimes creepy dark. This is what it looks like:

I almost always have the right of way. 

I like the mornings because it is quiet. There is little to no traffic. I don't have to wait at stoplights as much. It can be a bit eerie at times though. One of my first runs, I made the mistake of running by the lake and a canal that continues to my house. Some of the lights there were not on, and it was scary. Luckily, I don't have to fear monkeys here, but the occasional cat is enough to push the blood pressure through the roof. 

It reminds me of a really dumb run I took in Madison one time. I was training for the Indianapolis Marathon, and it was summer time. It was so hot all the time. I decided to run after work one day and thought the arboretum was a suitable place because it forced me to run through and not cut distance. Well, it got dark when I was in there, and there weren't any lights. The surrounding trees created a darkness that I had forgotten existed while living the city life. It was so scary and very dangerous. There were a few cars that were driving through. The scariest part was when an equally dumb cyclist was pedaling through and did not have a light either. We literally almost collided. 

Now, I stick to the streets with lights and try to avoid collisions. I listen to my podcasts and enjoy the occasional, "HELLOOOO!" from men on electric scooters. 

Things to love about America

Trampolining with Lisa

Fresh Snow

Everything about this photo

Traveling in winter

College Football

Gma and Kiki

Gas <$2

Driving through a town that puts snow in the middle of the road: Silver Lake

Running with CARA

During a short visit to Chicago on my way back to China, I got convinced/tricked/coerced into running with my friend's training group CARA. I was uneasy about the run because I had not been "training" in the last two months because of the Chinese pollution, school stress, and general laziness. When my friend told me about the run weeks earlier, it sounded fun.

Waking up at 6 AM on Saturday morning in Chicago to run 6 miles was seeming a lot less fun when I looked out the window to see a fresh dusting of snow. It was even less fun when we went outside and determined that it was raining. When we went back inside to get another water protective layer, I had considered all of the scenarios of getting back in bed and never running agin.

The concept of group running is not lost on me. I was a cross country and track enthusiast for six years in high school. We ran in groups. We motivated each other. We looked on with understanding when we saw each other collapse in pain after things called "hill workouts." Coming back to America, I was excited to see what the business of running was like. I was thrilled to join in a group of other people who felt it was necessary and appropriate to run in snowy rain on slushy trails through Chicago at 7:30 AM on a Saturday morning. I was not disappointed when we saw numerous runners, CARA and other, running along the lakeshore path that morning.

We joined our pace group of 19 individuals and started out on a 6-mile run. I asked little questions because it's running--not much to know. Our pace leader soon taught me otherwise. Elisabeth and I found our places in the two by two running line. We were the second in line, and it didn't take long for us to resemble something like this:

http://runningtips101.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/running.jpg

Our leader insisted aggressively that we leave no gaps between runners. I felt like I had joined some weird military program in China and had to fall in line or die. My heels were continually clipped by the runner behind me, but I didn't blame him because he feared for his life also! Shortly into the run, the leader sprinted up to tell Elisabeth to move over two inches because she was pushing me to the middle of the path. Fall in line, or die. I almost forgot to mention the military chants that were happening. Due to the rain/snow, the path was pretty gross. The leaders would shout: "WATER!" "RUNNER UP!" "RUNNER BACK!" and my favorite "FOOTING!" which sounded a lot like "PUDDING!" Safety first, or die. It seemed so redundant to keep shouting water and pudding because there was water everywhere! I just kept waiting for someone to slip so I could watch the dominoes fall in a pile of pudding.

Back in the People's Republic:

Quiet streets for early morning jet lagged runs
no snow, no ice, no military march

Wanted: Strong Girls for Carrying Boxes

I consider myself lucky to be raised in a way that never made me feel inferior to the male species. I was given the same opportunities and expected to do the same work my brother did. No one in family ever said, "Hey, go get your brother to help me carry these bales of hay to the cows." Nope. Everyone carried bales, everyone fed feed, everyone was expected to clean their rooms, and everyone tried to get out of the same jobs equally: cleaning calf pens, washing walls in the barn, and emptying the dishwasher.

Being in Asia has been challenging. Here, being a woman can at times actually mean you are worth less-figuratively or literally. Anwer has always proudly claimed that his parents sent his sister to the same school as him and his brother. At first, I was like big deal? Now, I see. It is common for Indian parents to pay for better schooling for boys or not allow young girls to even attend school.

I always hated when people would ask, "Can I get some strong boys to help me....?" Why do they have to be boys? Girls can carry boxes. Girls can push things. Girls are people too. The first time I remember being outwardly angry about this was on a mission trip to Guatemala. They were always looking for boys to do this or do that. I knew that I was strong. I knew that I was capable, and I knew others around me were as well.

It happened in my school recently on a mission of the sorts: the Giving Tree. Our school arranged for over 800 bags of gifts, clothing, and school supplies to be given to a local migrant school. I kept hearing adults asking for "strong boys" to help carry boxes or move bags from one location to another. What is this teaching the girls? Sorry, you're not strong enough or able to carry these things. We don't need you? It got even worse when I found out that they did not have enough people for the trip and had to seek out some "strong boys" who were actually not involved with the charity project at all to come along to deliver the bags.

The way sport teams are often treated is a whole different bag of worms that I'll save for another time, but until then, let's start asking for "strong girls" to carry our boxes.