ONLY

In China...LOL
Yesterday the shower drain in the MB decided to take a vacation...ie not drain as was proper, that being it's only job.
So I called the front office for some assistance.  I made an appointment for them to come and clean it out or what ever needed doing.  These two workers show up to fix things.  Mind you, these are the workers who usually hang my pictures or put in new light bulbs.  She always carries a dust pan and towels and cleans up whatever mess the guy makes with her tools.  This is her job, she does it day in and day out....with a smile:)
I answer the door and there they are, her with the dust pan, him with a ladder.....not sure what that is for so I pantomime the shower action, say water in Chinese, and try to indicate the drain.....wish I had all that on video, must have looked pretty amusing from their side.  They did figure out what I meant and left the ladder behind.  Up we went to the 3rd floor....I hate those stairs and do everything in my power to only go up them once a day and that is at bed time!
So, in the shower I resort to pantomime again trying to show that the water won't go down.  I remove the plastic removable drain part and set it aside, point to the hole the water is suppose to go out of and say "Bu shui"  and look at them.  He picks up the plastic part and starts inspecting it.....really?  I put it in the corner of the space.....I tap him on the shoulder as he is crouched in the shower,  "Bu, bu" as I point to the pluggy...
He starts to adjust it with a screw driver....really, omg I can't take this.  I call my friend, my lifesaving, Chinese speaking friend, but she texts she is teaching and cannot talk now.  I call Mikes admin. she picks right up.  I explain to her and she explains to him.....this takes a bunch of time I do not have as I am trying to prepare a nice birthday for Olivia.....We finally get him to inspect the drain but he thinks it doesn't have a problem till I turn on the water and let it run for about 40 seconds and it starts to fill the shower and go nowhere.  Then it is determined he doesn't have the right equipment to fix this and will contact the office....The conversation with the admin about that took forever because she wanted them to then call me and make an appointment and I couldn't make her understand that when they say they will send somebody it is usually in a matter of minutes, no appointment needed once they have shown up!
Those people leave, the doorbell rings about 5 minutes later.  Two guys with a compressor are now at my door......All I was hoping for was a snake....I guess they don't have those here.   They bring this thing in the house, it is ancient and covered with dirt.  They wheel it across the room to the stairs, they carry it up to the third floor, they set it down, planning to drag it across the bedroom where I have my silk Iraqi rug!!!  I make some sort of noise and they got the idea they had to carry it.  In the bathroom again I am looking at this trying to figure out if it is gas or electric.....yes they would start up a gas engine inside a building with no ventilation....luckily it is electric.  They start it up at which point I see that the fan blade cover is non existent!  It is loose and rattles like it could fly off at any second!  I make all kinds of comments and tell them that is bad and make a cover with my hands....they smile and laugh.  Now, Mike likes to take pictures of unsafe working conditions he sees to use at work to show the people what NOT to do.  I get the idea of taking a picture so I rush down those awful stairs grab the camera and run back up.  I show them the camera.  "Wo de airen xihuan zhe ge."
"My husband will like that one".  "Dui". he says....that means right so I took that as approval to take the picture.

Here it is in all its glory.  And here are the guys.  And look at that tiny hose they have...                   

(I want to write beside the picture and can't figure out how:( )

I don't know what the wobbly fan is made of but if it flew off there could be issues with work related injuries!!  The best part of all is once they turned the thing on there was this hissing then spewing of water, disgusting drain water out of the sink and all over the bathroom.  While they stood there and watched, I threw out the toothbrushes:(  It was so gross!!  I didn't have time to clean it then as I was, perhaps you remember, getting ready for Olivia's birthday celebration!!!  

The drain was cleared.....

Maybe we need to invest in a snake!

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Bet you've never seen one of these before!

A Map......
Not just an ordinary map, mind you.  A map of the United States of America.  Not just an ordinary map of the United States of America, mind you.  It is all in Chinese!!
My friends sons passport got misplaced and after tearing apart the house for four days they decided they had to get a new one because the Visa was going to expire on the entire family's passports and you only have a certain window where you are allowed to apply for new ones......
So on Monday I went with them to the US Embassy while they applied for it.  I really wanted to see the Embassy and this helped for any future issues I might have....I now know how to get in....American passport holders go to the head of the line!  And it is a long line.  I would show you pictures but since you cannot take even a cell phone into the Embassy I didn't get any:(  The Embassy opens at 8:30, we arrived about 8:20 and the line has about 100 foreigners in it outside the building but then as we went in it was obvious there were more like 200 worming their way through the labyrinth.  We just followed the hallways up to the American only section, no waiting on this day.  I am sure it isn't always like this, I think we were lucky:)

When we got there all these people were running about in the street passing out these flyers.  Not very helpful to us but the Chinese need to be able to say/show where they are going in order to get their Visa to go to the US.

Sorry the pictures are not so great....little camera, glossy paper.....

Oh yes, I have had a helper this morning.  She is so sweet:)

This only took a million years to post.....so love blogging in China!

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

ART!!

Olivia's Art.....
Installed at school.  Can't be missed, it is right at the bottom of one of two staircases in the High School building....I guess because she is in High School?  These are stickers she had printed.  She cut the sheets into whatever sizes she wanted and meticulously applied them to the mannequin.  She also hand lettered and painted the paper behind.

She is in Higher Level (HL) art in the IB program.  They have to produce 18 pieces of art all of which are supposed to somehow be related......Her first pieces started out with her adjustment to living in China.  She has moved on to another aspect about........I will have to let her explain, I am only here to show off her stuff:)

Love, fondly sincerely,
Zaijian,
Ramona

My Birthday present

Well, it was a long time ago.....
I haven't shared what Mike got me for my birthday.  I have been wanting a set of scrolls.  The only requirement was traditional Chinese design. I have seen many that I really liked but could never commit to any set in particular.  Mike has rescued me from my conundrum.

And the best thing is, when I came home from the States he had hung them up for me:)  He is so nice to me.  I tried to make a bigger picture but all the stuff on the side ends up on the picture...not good.

I need to get closeups, that is for another day.

Love, fondly, sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona

Oh My Gosh it is November!

And I have certainly been neglecting things! Specifically, this blog:(

We have been busy living our lives...isn't that what we all do?

As you can see by the new picture at the top of the blog I went with Keary back to the pumpkin place.  We packed two cases of apples, some bags of the squash we cook down for pumpkin recipes, some bags of apples, some bags of a fruit that isn't quite a peach, and a whole lot of pumpkins into the back of her van.  We felt a bit selfish not inviting someone else to come along but we knew there would be a spacial challenge involved in fitting more people and more pumpkin in.  This is the back of the van with squash and pumpkins all the way up to the seats.  This is the lady that sold them to us.  She thought we were cute.  Especially me and my lousy Chinese.  She liked us so much she gave us several of the pumpkins!!  I made applesauce, and apple crisp.  Peachy crisp and baked then smushed the pumpkin.

My sunglasses broke a couple months ago and Olivia has been wanting a pair of sunglasses and glasses are CHEAP here.  Or maybe I should say inexpensive for prescription glasses at Glasses City.  Sadly I have no pictures of Glasses City.  I will get some when I take Mike to get some new glasses.  It is a huge building that is full of little glasses shops like all the other market places to shop around China.  I have a friend from Finland who can test your eyes and write your prescription for glasses.  (We actually went to the Dr. to have them done here.)   She used to work at Glasses City so I asked her to go there with me and show me how it is done.  The advantage of going with her was I didn't even have to bargain, they gave me the best price right off the bat.  So nice not to have to haggle. But today I can post pictures of me and Olivia in our new sunglasses and Olivia in her new glasses.

These are the new glasses....umm, I know that is obvious they are not sunglasses! They have purple bows:)

These are the sunglasses in case you weren't sure:)

I think they are cute!

She is happy, she has never had prescription sunglasses before.

This is her glasses case, it looks just like my new glasses case....so to solve the problem of not knowing whose was whose I made a little charm for hers from beads I brought.

My new sunglasses:):)

They are taking a bit of getting used to because they are brown lenses, never had them before always the blue/gray sort.

I will try to be better.

(I keep saying that.....)

Love, fondly, Sincerely,

Zaijian,

Ramona