Well, the week is over, and even though it felt like it dragged, I can't believe it's Friday night. I finished my English Corners with classes 21-24 and only have 4 left. I got a little emotional with the last English Corner for class 24, because they are pretty much my favorite class, bt I think they understood that while I'm happy to go home, it will still be hard to leave them all...but after today, I'm down to a week and a half left of teaching. Crazy.
This week had a few interesting happenings. On Thursday night I got home from English Corner and unloaded my things. After a while Laura and I decided to go get dinner. It was just about 7pm and we got to Liu Jie's just as they were turning off the lights. Liu Hao was going to let us in but we decided to head back home and fend for ourselves. Just as we got to our apartment, we realized that neither of us had grabbed our keys. Sweet. Locked out in China. We attempted to break in using any methods we could muster, but no dice. We called Mr. Xu and told him we were locked out. His first response was "Why?". We had to tell him we didn't do it on purpose, and he came to see how he could help. Apparently, there is a number on our door for the locksmith and he called and had the man come break us into our place. While we were waiting we talked to Mr. Xu about how we had no hot water. He simply told us that our pipes were frozen and they probably wouldn't work before we left, but we could just go to a hotel and pay to shower there. He also mentioned the public shower at the school, but understood that were didn't want to use that. The locksmith finally arrived and it cost us 50RMB to get into our apartment, but by then we didn't even care, so we just paid the man and sent him on his way.
Today I didn't have classes until the afternoon so I was able to sleep in for the first time all week. I was still up around 9 though, I don't really sleep in all that well unless I'm up super late the night before. Anyways, I was able to catch some of the National Championship football game, but about halfway through th 4th, our power went out. This had happened before so we checked all of our fuses and whatnot but nothing seemed to work. I had to head off to teach, but Laura hung around and called Mr. Xu (again) and he told her to go to the guard station and try to communicate the problem. Luckily, when I got back from class the power was back on and Mr. Xu was on his way with our salary. When he brought it by he told us that he would try to arrange a hotel for us to go to and shower. We decided to take matters into our own hands, and after dinner, we went to the hotel that is owned by the parens of Laura's student. She said they had hot water and that it would cost us 20RMB each to shower there. We both felt so disgusting and in need, 20RMB was well worth it. We ran home to get our stuff and headed back. We were both able to take nice hot showers and as we headed out to pay, the woman told us that it was on the house. She said that because we were the teachers of her son, and so far from home, we didn't have to worry about paying for it. And we were supposed to come back next time we needed the hot water. I guess it all tends to even itself out...and we came out ahead being warm, and clean and all, and back in our apartment.
Christine will be arriving tomorrow morning and I'm sure we'll have a fantastic weekend, then just a few more days to get through before we head down to Shanghai and Hong Kong. I still can't believe things are coming to a close, but I'm ready to take the next step.
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