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Today’s been a crazy/frustrating/funny/ridiculous day. We FINALLY got to a café after all the ridiculousness this morning but still have to get our power working again. Let me tell you about my day…
Things obviously started on a ridiculous note when our power went out. Then we went to our leaders’ place for breakfast which was great except I gave myself a paper cut and my OJ spilled…not a big deal, but I should’ve known the day was going to go this way right then.
We then went to go get cell phones. Okay there. Next was the bike shop…dun dun dun.
I couldn’t really decide what bike to get but we all eventually just paid a little extra with the intention of being able to go mountain biking a little bit throughout the year. We go to leave the store and we get no more than a block away and the wheel somehow gets broken from driving off the curb onto the road. We walked it back and they tried to blame ME for driving it off the curb. IT’S A MOUNTAIN BIKE!!! It’s not supposed to do that! So we left while they were fixing it…already 30 minutes late for lunch and due to a misunderstanding with our landlord, he had been waiting for us to pay rent and go to the police station to register.
But on the way there, it started pouring…great. And about a block from the restaurant Tom slips on a step and possibly broke his pinky toe. I was already frustrated by this point because of the bike store ordeal and told him, “With all due respect, if that had just happened to me on top of everything else, I would’ve been TICKED!” He didn’t take it personally.
We eventually went back with our leader who is fluent and they still were trying to blame us because they thought we had TWO people on the bike when we drove off the curb (not the case) but he got them to give me my money back anyway since he knows them well and brings them plenty of business. It was so frustrating because I had plotted out in my head all the things I would say in English, like, “It’s a MOUNTAIN bike, it’s not supposed to break when I drive off a curb!” but I obviously don’t know a lick of the language to say any of those things. It just makes me upset even still (a little bit….I’m over it!) because I paid extra for this bike with the hope of being able to take it mountain biking but if someone my size can’t even ride it off of a curb, it’s for sure going to break if I’m riding down a mountain…oh well, it’ll cost me $10 to fix it I guess and I should just expect it to happen.
So that’s it…we pretty much missed lunch and I haven’t eaten anything besides a cookie still left in my bag but at least we’re in an air conditioned café and I got to check my email! All in all I have a pretty good attitude about everything but even though it’s only a matter of $8 or so, that probably wouldn’t be the case had I not gotten my money back!
We still don’t have power or internet but will hopefully be getting power back once we leave from here. Hopefully we’ll have internet within the next few days at our place…I’m excited for that.
We definitely haven’t gotten into a groove yet but things have been so ridiculous that it’s almost been fun. We have a couple weeks before students even get here so we’ll do a lot as a team just hanging out and getting to know each other. I feel bad for Jeff and BJ having to lead us around everywhere and take care of us but he’s been a huge help and so have the other long-termers who are pretty good at Chinese.
Alright, that’s it for now, hope everyone’s doing well and I’ll keep you informed!
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