This past weekend, Austin came to visit & he planned to leave on Sunday. Knowing that he had a long travel day back to Xiangyang ahead of him, I decided to wake up early to go get some delicious 包子 (boazi– steamed stuffed buns) for us to eat for breakfast. I’m not too gifted when it comes to being quiet in the mornings, but I figured surely I would be able to sneak out the door quietly since he was asleep in the back room. Then, I realized it was a torrential downpour outside. There was no way I could take Charlie with me & Char was in no way letting me put him back in his crate. I had no choice but to leave him with Austin. Char, of course, immediately bombarded Austin with early morning kisses after pouncing on his chest- totally ruining the peaceful morning plan. As I tried to calm Charlie down, the little girl I’m tutoring (Ava is her English name) called me and asked if she could come over early. Any other time, I would’ve been completely fine with this, but this was the worst timing because my sofa couch was pulled out and made, filling almost the entire room I tutor in & I still needed to get breakfast. So I asked her to wait.

This picture was taken after the rain stopped and the water started going down.

Once I headed down the stairs, I found that a swimming pool of muddy water had replaced the basketball courts in front of my apartment (aka- my only way out). Wow. I texted Ava and explained that she may want to reschedule, but being the dedicated student that she is, she said it was fine and had her dad drive through the flooded area to get to my apartment. Once she arrived, everything was great- she remembered all the words I had taught her the week before and she was just precious in every way.

The cars are parked on higher ground, but you can tell the flooding by looking at the blue exercise bars.

Sunday morning after my lesson, Austin and I ate leftovers for breakfast and just hoped and prayed for the rain to stop because he had a train to catch. But the rain didn’t stop until it was too late for Austin to make his train home. So he bought more tickets online to go home the next day (Monday) in hopes that the water would go down by then.
Luckily, not long after he bought his replacement tickets, the waters went down! Woohoo! This meant we had an extra day together and we didn’t have to spend it trapped inside my apartment.
While the waters were high, we discussed going to see Superman vs Batman if the waters went down in time for a night movie- so we stuck to that plan once they did. I was so excited to see it and even though Austin went to see it the day it came out, he was pumped to see it again. Because the movie theater websites are all in Chinese and their locations are in Chinese, I asked Shu to help me find a theater and a time that he and I could go. Like the wonderful friend that she is, she speedily got back to me & told me exactly where to go and when.

A couple hours later, Austin and I headed out to grab a light dinner before the movies and bought some snacks to take to the movie theater. Once we arrived at the theater, they motioned to us that the only showing wouldn’t start for 4 more hours. Aka, the websites times were wrong. What. A. Bummer. Austin then suggested that we go to the other mall and see what times they were showing the movie. After a short taxi ride, we got to the second theater just to find out that the showing that we had arrived just in time for, only had 1 seat left and it wouldn’t be showing again until late that night. Noooo! At that point, Austin and I gave up on seeing a movie.

This was the 4th time in the past 2 months that we had gone to a theater and not gotten to see the movie we intended to see- the first time the movie was in Chinese and the second time the movie was in English, but not the one we had lid to see. In that situation, they sold us tickets to a different movie than we asked to see because it wasn’t showing at all in English so they just sold is tickets to the one movie they offered that was in English. Haha. What a mess.

On our way up to the movie theater, I had seen some “bumper boats” that were on the ice skating rink just one floor below the theater so I asked Austin if he’d like to do that instead. He of course said yes because he could see the excitement in my eyes, but he wasn’t too thrilled to be the foreign spectacles that we became. As tons of Chinese people gathered around the rink to stare at us, I jokingly told Austin this was war. (It gets old being stared at and watched 24/7 and since there are practically no other foreigners in my city, it’s really bad here) There were 4 bumper boats. The two that we weren’t in had 2 little Chinese boys in them. Naturally, the 4 of us battled it out (all in good fun). Austin and I won! Mostly, because the other little boys’ times ran out before ours did, but a win is a win! I accepted it proudly while chanting U-S-A! U-S-A! Yep. I was that person.

After our win, we decided to go try the sushi at a Japanese restaurant near the ice skating rink because- why not? Our plans had fallen through. It was the perfect time to explore and try new things. The sushi wasn’t terrible. It was pretty weird though. Instead of using spicy mayo like they do at home, they had loaded it down with plain mayo and they didn’t serve the sushi with soy sauce.

Afterwards, I wanted us to go get drinks or dessert at this restaurant that I had gone to back in December. They had English menus the last time, and I had been wanting to go there and sit in one of their jungle rooms (It’s the little things that excite me). After a bus ride and more walking, we made it to the restaurant and they had availability in the jungle room! I was so excited… until I realized that they had replaced their menus for ones that were completely in Chinese and didn’t have any pictures. This made things extremely difficult so we scratched the idea of dessert and just got drinks. As we were sitting there, they began to bring us silverware and placemats. huh? We were pretty confused. Then, they started bringing us food. Had Austin not been there, I would’ve just kept saying I don’t understand in Chinese on repeat, but he actually knows how to say,” we aren’t eating and we only want our drinks”. Sadly, the accent is so different in my city- or because they just wanted to charge us for food- they didn’t understand. Eventually, after a game of charades with management and help from Chinese friends, we were able to get the food returned free of charge.

He was not so happy about the situation.

From there, I wanted to show Austin a near-by restaurant that served delicious Chinese bar-b-que. We went in and had a few kabobs to try it out and ended up staying there for an hour or so just talking about life.

I wanted to post this picture to show the cultural differences. In China, even at nice restaurants people will throw their trash and drink cans on the floor even though there is a trash can provided at each table here.

This restaurant is supposed to be Western/American themed. Even though no one here knows any English, their signs and decor are all in English. Which is why they have inspirational quotes right beside harley davidson signs throughout this place. haha.

A little after 11 pm, we arrived back at my school. The security guard at the gate was sleeping so we had to squeeze through the gate like we were playing a game of don’t wake daddy. My apartment is probably .25 to .5 of a mile from the gate. When we got there, my apartment building was locked and I didn’t have a key!! ugh. Before this moment, I had never even known they locked this door. We knocked and knocked in hopes that someone would come let us in. No one ever came, so we headed back through the dark campus to wake up the sweet security man that moments before, we were trying to let sleep. He doesn’t know English. He was startled and confused when we woke him, but after yet another round of charades and some broken Chinese, he understood that I was locked out. So we made the walk back and he found a night guard to come with us.

I had hoped that when we got back to my apartment they would just open the door with their key. That would’ve been too easy though. China doesn’t do easy and obviously doesn’t give their security guards keys to the buildings. So maybe, I was hoping at this point, they would call someone inside the building to let us in. Wrong again. Of course that would’ve been too easy too. So after beating on the doors, flashing strobing lights into the windows of different people who live on campus, and exhausting all our resources to try to break in, some old, Chinese man woke up and let us in. Praise, Ye The Lord! By 12:30 am, I could finally call it a night.

The moral of the story is, sometimes when you intend on having a peaceful dinner and a movie night in China, China has other plans for you. Sometimes, instead of sitting and watching a super hero movie, you end up running all over town looking for things to do. Although Sunday was not-s0-super[hero], it was definitely one that I won’t forget and one that I’m thankful for- mishaps and all. It’s times like these that memories are made. Even if they are frustrating at the time, these memories are fun to look back on and laugh about. 

For another look on one of my weekends, click here.