Day 6 -- Suzhou, China

Another basically uneventful day today. I woke up once at about 3:00am because someone was calling my cell phone. I was too tired to talk, so I pushed ignore and went back to sleep. I woke up again at 5:45am and just hung out in the apartment for the morning. After eating breakfast, I helped my mom finish making a 'no-sew' blanket for her ayi (maid, pronounced "I-E") as a Chinese New Year gift. The ayi, Fong, showed up while Mom was downstairs, so Daniel and I let her in to do her work. I've never had a maid, so it was a little weird for me to just go about my business and let her go about hers. (*just a note: the ayi makes 300RMB a month from my parents and comes in three times a week for a few hours a day to clean. That's US$37 per month or about US$2.85 for each day that she is here. My mom also refers her to other expats so she can get more work.) She does dishes, cleans the surfaces, empties the garbage and recycling, sweeps the hardwood floors, cleans the bathrooms, and irons clothes. She doesn't necessarily the 'deep-cleaning' very well, but it is worth having her around to do the ironing and it gives her money to live on too. While the ayi was here, the realtor and the air conditioner/heater repairmen showed up. Everyone just kind of went about their business, basically ignoring each other: Daniel watching TV, me on the computer, my mom (who came back from the other apartment) getting ready to go out, the ayi cleaning, one repairman working and the other watching, and the realtor sitting on the couch chatting on the phone. That was a lot of people (and chaos) to have in this apartment. The repairman decided to take the non-functioning heating unit out of my parents' room to take away and repair instead of crawling out on an 8 inch ledge 21 floors up to get to the exterior unit on a balcony outside (with no door or window access) with no safety lines. They have done it for this unit at least 3 times in the last few months and my mom gets uncomfortable and can hardly bear to watch them go out on that ledge. Guess you can't be afraid of heights if you are going to be an air conditioner repairman. When they did finally remove the unit, the let freon leak into the bedroom. I walked by and could smell the freon and feel it in my lungs and eyes. The realtor, who was here to supervise, let me know that she had them open a window to get rid of the smell. There seemed to be no concern for the toxicity of what the two men were standing there breathing as they worked. The realtor and repairmen finally left and the ayi finished up and left as well. Before she left, I was actually able to remember some of my Chinese and asked her to write down her phone number for us to give to another expat and wish her a Happy New Year (Xin Nian Kuaile pronounced "shin knee-an kwhy luh"). Daniel's sister called as we were heading out the door, so he got to talk to her for a few minutes before we walked down the road to the police station. We were told that we could go there to extend our visas (we have two entries for 30 days at a time, but our tickets are for 31 days and we may not make it to Hong Kong to use the second entry; the fine could be about US$600 if we stay beyond our visas). The guy seemed to understand what we wanted and went about entering information in the computer and scanning our photos. When he finished, however, I was pretty sure that all he did was register us as foreigners at my parents' address. We called the office assistant, Rain, at my Dad's office who only seemed to vaguely understand what we were saying. After much frustration and several explanations to Rain (there is a reason we sometimes refer to her as 'Fog') we finally got her to ask the right questions and figured out that we had to go elsewhere to do this. So, after a quick stop at the bank and the convenience store in the basement of the bank, we went to the other side of town (New District) to the Suzhou Administrative Center to try again. This time we got someone who spoke very good English and explained that we wouldn't be able to do anything until the 20th of February, just a couple days before the 30 days is up. This guy was very helpful in letting us know our options, but we spent a lot of time accomplishing nothing. Left there and decided to head to Auchan to grab some groceries and goodies for the New Year’s party we were going to in the evening. It was pure chaos in the store, partially because that is what is normal for the shopping experience and partially because everyone was shopping to prepare for New Year’s. The Chinese shop like they drive, but about 5 times worse. No one has any regard for anyone else’s space. Everyone just pushes their cart until someone moves. We got caught in the middle of a traffic jam in the store as 7 carts, about 20 people, and a shelf-stocker pulling a pallet of goods decided to use the same 5-foot wide aisle to pass through at the same time. There was plenty of yelling and no one budging. It was quite humorous to watch and if I could have gotten my arm down to the camera on my belt, I would have snapped a photo. Another funny/ bizarre photo op I missed was a mother holding her toddler up so he could urinate in a garbage can inside the store. I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go. After about an hour and 20 minutes trying to gather everything we needed, we hopped in line that ran down the fresh fish/ turtle/ squid/ shrimp aisle (the slime on the floor was just lovely and the smell was even better). At least they have some concept of how a line is supposed to work. It only took 40 minutes to get to the front of the line. This allowed the locals plenty of opportunities to stare at us and check out what was in our basket. They are all very curious about what exactly we foreigners eat/ buy and have no qualms whatsoever about blatantly staring. I’ve heard from some other expats that they have actually had people come up and move things around in their basket so they can see everything. Anyway, it is both a strange and laughable experience to be so intriguing to complete strangers. We finally escaped Auchan and arrived home by 5:30pm. By this time I was incredibly hungry as all we managed to grab in the process of trying to get our visas extended and shopping was a can of Pringles. Dad was home from work when we arrived, so we decided once again to go out for dinner. We went over to Bar Street again, this time to ‘The Indian Kitchen.’ The food was authentic and to die for. More over-indulgence…not sure that I’m going to lose the few pounds I was hoping for while over here, at least not at the rate I have been going at. We got home about 7:45pm, took some time to update my blog, then watched DVDs until I fell asleep on the couch. A side note: Dad’s driver, Mr. Ni, got in a minor accident today. As he was driving, woman pushed her bicycle right into the side of his van and it got stuck up under the bumper. The police arrived and fined him 5RMB (about 62 cents), gave it to the woman, then let everyone go about their business. Cheapest accident I’ve ever heard of.