11th November – 16th November 2019
Monday marked a special holiday in China… Singles Day! This is a day where single people celebrate the fact they are single by buying themselves gifts in the many online sales that are put on for the holiday. It is similar to Black Friday in America except you are buying for yourself rather than rushing to buy Christmas presents at discounted prices. The day was chosen because the number one is in the date four times representing people standing by themselves (but also they are standing together so… I’m not going to argue with the logic, I’m just saying) and more recently it has begun to creep it’s way into Western culture. Now if you know me you’ll know I’m not going to turn down a good excuse to shop, single or not! I didn’t go completely crazy though (with the Taobao app it can be all too easy to spend a small fortune) giving myself a budget to 1000 yuan. I decided to take advantage of the discount and buy myself a few items of furniture to make my little studio feel more like a home. When I arrived in China my apartment only had the bare essentials that any person really needs in their room; a bed, wardrobe and a desk. I honestly expected the items I bought to take up to a month to arrive but they have been slowly turning up one by one over the course of the week.
I have never put flat pack furniture together on my own and I really threw myself in at the deep end with the first piece of furniture to arrive. I wish I had taken a picture of just how many pieces this make-up table had come in because to look at it now you’d think it looks easy! As I unpacked everything I realised I had made a terrible mistake in ordering it, I had no instructions and not even the slightest clue of what I was doing! So I turned to WeChat (China’s answer to Facebook and WhatsApp in one convenient app that also lets you pay for just about anything from a snack at the corner shop to a flight!) and posted a plea for help. Thankfully my friend Luna messaged me and showed up with the tools to get the job done, along with about twenty tangerines and two mangosteens. The rest of the furniture has gone together without an issue, I’m still waiting on my bedside tables to arrive but my apartment is really starting to feel like home!
For those who don’t already know me and my friend Jess rescued a kitten last year and named her Storm because there was a typhoon forecast to hit our province in China the weekend we found her. While I was in Myanmar she escaped her foster home and returned expecting a litter of kittens! So I am now in the process of finding loving homes for them. This week kitten number one was adopted into his new family and although he is a bit scared of his new big brothers seems to be doing well.
Not to be out done by last week, this week decided to end with a scene that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Hitchcock thriller! I came out of the toilet last night and noticed the cats were all staring at something, I looked up expecting to find a moth or similar fluttering around the ceiling light but that is not what I saw… a GIANT wasp had invaded my apartment. In what I can only describe as the most dramatic hour of my life, I scrambled to get the cats into their cage before one of them tried to eat the wasp all while staying as low as possible as the wasp dive bombed my head! I was on the edge of a genuine panic attack but I couldn’t run out of my apartment and leave the cats behind and I was terrified to open a window in case more came in. I had no idea what to do and I could tell the wasp was getting agitated as it started flying into the walls more and more! Finally I remembered that the previous tenant had left a bottle of insect killer in the apartment and I rushed to find it. Usually I don’t kill bugs, I just feel that they don’t know how terrifying they are so it’s not fair to kill them for that, but this wasp was a real threat to the safety of myself and my cats. I don’t know if it would have done that much damage to myself but I wasn’t about to wait to find out and compared to the size of kittens I really think it could have seriously hurt one of them. So I sprayed it with the bug killer and hid in my toilet until I heard it hit the floor. This is when I discovered the second one! I swear this one was twice the size of the first one and I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from! (I think they came in under my balcony door as there were no windows open at the time they appeared). It flew into the kitchen area of my apartment and I sprayed it before hiding around the corner. I heard it drop but when I came round the corner I couldn’t find it anywhere. I think it went back out the way it came because a thorough search of the apartment has not uncovered it. My heart rate was well above what is healthy at this point and I had to sit on my bed and just breathe for a good ten minutes.
By this time it was about 9 o’clock and I hadn’t eaten dinner yet so I headed to my friend Rose’s restaurant because I was not about to cook after that crazy hour! Of the few times I have been sad or stressed in China I have always found myself at Rose’s restaurant and she has never failed to cheer me up or calm me down, often without even knowing she is doing it. She is so warm and happy that it is impossible to be sad in her presence! Her daughter is also such a lovely little girl and even though she can’t speak as much English as her mum she is always eager to talk to me (I’ve been a distraction from homework more than once since I arrived back in China…) So I ended up staying there until after midnight and made some new friends who invited me to go shopping with them next weekend.
If you are interested in my previous adventures in China click on one of these:
Well Travelled Lass 