Life is good in the Yan Tan Barrio: Ruth and I have just enjoyed a meal of bacon cheeseburgers and tossed salad. Like true immigrants anywhere, we pool our resources with other displaced Americans and replicate the experience of home. In this case, our friend Kendra found a butcher who would make ground beef, our friend Kate found bacon in one of the supermarkets, and I had located both cheese and, believe it or not, sesame seed buns.

It all came together on a frosty Saturday night when we would like to think that the air quality can not get any worse – but unfortunately we know it will. Less than a month into the coal-fired heating season, visibility is less than two city blocks. Many, including me, wear face masks when outdoors. All the same, my throat hurts a bit and I have chronic sinus irritation. All the same, I was chatting with friends in the lane today around noontime, and we all looked straight up and optimistically discerned a bit of blue sky through the haze. God’s in his heaven, and, yes, Virginia, there’s still a sky up there somewhere!

Our Thanksgiving was companionable and festive. I roasted two scrawny chickens and a pan of bread stuffing, and produced an approximation of a pumpkin pie. Ruth, Kendra and Rachel prepared the potatoes, vegetables and fruit. Old curmudgeon that I am, I didn’t expect to be drawn in on the gut level – but of course I was the one who got all teary and couldn’t say her part at the blessing! We have genuine community, here; that makes the coming of Christmas so far from home less daunting. (All of us taught on Thanksgiving; Christmas is on Sunday this year, so we will not have to teach.)

The teaching semester is ending; just four weeks left. This past week I gave my second-year students the instructions for their final project and sent them into a predictable tailspin. Each working group of four students must go to the Internet and learn about a specific topic, drawn at random on a slip of paper from my old red hat. The topics are things like Barbie dolls or NASCAR – when the students couldn’t find the "answers" in their dictionaries, on the spot, there was widespread panic and uproar. I hope when I see them again this week they will have grown into the process of inquiry on this scale, and maybe be prepared for larger tasks in the future. They are all so bright, creative and capable, and China is on a trajectory that will take all of them far beyond the old pedagogy of memorization and recitation. I pray that my assignments will really help prepare them.