Playing basketball with Chinese people

So I've found the best way for me to make sure my heart still works is to play basketball. The Chinese love basketball, there are courts everywhere and pretty consistently there are games going on. Having a basketball court 200 yards from our apartment is great so I try to go out as often as I can. I also bought a very nice basketball from the athletic store across the street from my apartment for like $10. Immediately upon walking onto the court every person notices, and I really just have to stand there until there's a break in the game and they'll ask me to play with them. They'll tell me the teams by pointing and usually the next tallest person on the court will always guard me. What I've come to realize by growing up in the United States is that basketball is ingrained in our lives from the time we are young children. There is nothing like house league basketball, or even school teams at any age really. I've never considered myself very good at basketball, but it really does feel great to be the tallest person on the court and also be able to dribble with my left hand. Honestly for most of them it might as well be a club. Anyways, it's always a good time and the Chinese always love to let me join in with them.

So that's nice, but what isn't is that we've finally gotten some real fall weather and it's started raining a bit. It's actually pretty cold, and I definitely didn't pack well. There was a pretty incredible storm this past monday, in the middle of a bright day it suddenly turned pitch black and started pouring, then in the middle of that the sky turned bright yellow and it stopped for about 5 minutes. It then immediately blacked out again and rained for another hour, then it cleared up and was a bright day again. Very weird, and unfortunately I was viewing this from my bed as I became terribly sick that morning, my first time since being in Hangzhou. It was only for about half a day, and I'm doing just fine now, but it definitely was a very weird day, and I won't forget it for a while.