Cleaning!

09/08/13

Today was pretty uneventful but also a bit of a disaster. We slept in and when we got up I set about cleaning the apartment. Fast forward four hours and I was still stuck in the kitchen cleaning the cupboards, inside and out. They were actually pretty dirty when you got up close and personal so even though it took ages and made my fingers wrinkly I’m glad I got it done. Rory’s job for the day was to brush the floor unsupervised. This didn’t go too well. Within minutes I heard a loud crashing and when he reappeared he was carrying my ukulele. Somehow he had managed to knock it off a shelf and break the strings. 

We left the injured ukulele and met Tammy a Chinese girl who took us to China Unicom to get internet set up in our apartment. If you are reading this Blog then everything went well (or we’re still going to headquarters to use their free wifi!) After a quick KFC we did a bit more cleaning and put some washing on. After a few minutes I went back to the bathroom and saw orange water flowing out of a pipe attached to the washing machine. We managed to use the mop to herd the water down the drain and thought nothing more of it. Instead we got ready and met the other new teachers. Together we took a local bus, costing 4p, to a western bar where we had a few drinks and got to know each other. Eventually we made our way back to towards Wanda Plaza where we stopped in a sort of open air courtyard for yet more drinks. I’m pretty proud that I was able to stay awake and wasn’t the first person to leave. When we got home we took out our washing, only to discover that the orange towels we washed had completely stained all our underwear! I cannot wait to wear fluorescent peach pants... NAT! I’m pretty annoyed about ruining all my new knickers but thankfully we didn’t have any proper clothes in the wash and at least I’ll know for next time! Those £2 towels have been more hassle than they’re worth!

Other than the ukulele and washing disaster we had a pretty good, slightly uneventful day. Which I suppose isn’t the worst thing in the world. We didn’t do any sightseeing but we met lots of really nice people and discovered that KFC in China doesn’t use white chicken, just all the gross dark bits. Oh what an adventure we are having!