Bad days in China can be really bad...
We've experienced a few and posted some of them on this very blog site. But recently we have become complacent and had forgotten (with all our wonderful experiences of late) just how bad bad china days can be. So Beijing decided to give us a wake up call: below I recount the story I wrote in an email to my mom:
There are some days – we call them “bad china days” – when there is nothing you can do right in this place. Everything gets the better of you; it's almost as if the city doesn't want you to get too comfortable so it slaps you around the head every now and again just to show you whose boss. These days happen just around the time you're feeling confident about life in BJ. Well Sunday the 2nd was one of those...
We had such big plans to go to church, see Jo and Nigel (neither of which we have done in weeks), go shoe shopping for me (because I'm wearing thin the use of my strappy summer shoes during winter) and then perhaps to lunch. We woke up early and set out.
We took the wrong bus, took another wrong bus, got off at the wrong stop and couldn’t remember where church was. Once it was too late to continue trying to get to church we set out in search for shoes: we waited 30 min for the bus, got on another wrong bus, got off at another wrong stop and then walked for 30 min only to find that no shoe shop in the entire western area of wudaoko had my size - again. At this point you are almost always presented with a choice: keep trying or cut your losses and run. Usually we are not the "quitting" type but on a bad China day there is simply nothing you can do right, and so going home to salvage what's left of your day must always be first priority. So we ate a good lunch, cut our losses and headed home to get back into bed. It was a 5 hour waste of time, but it happens, and it hasn’t happened in a while so it’s ok.
Once home though, in our little haven outside of the madness of BJ we had a great dinner, caught up on some chores, watched grey's, did ironing and got a good night's sleep like really normal people. We are blessed in so many ways - I am one of the few in the world given the grace of a 4 day work week, so really how bad can things be.
We had such big plans to go to church, see Jo and Nigel (neither of which we have done in weeks), go shoe shopping for me (because I'm wearing thin the use of my strappy summer shoes during winter) and then perhaps to lunch. We woke up early and set out.
We took the wrong bus, took another wrong bus, got off at the wrong stop and couldn’t remember where church was. Once it was too late to continue trying to get to church we set out in search for shoes: we waited 30 min for the bus, got on another wrong bus, got off at another wrong stop and then walked for 30 min only to find that no shoe shop in the entire western area of wudaoko had my size - again. At this point you are almost always presented with a choice: keep trying or cut your losses and run. Usually we are not the "quitting" type but on a bad China day there is simply nothing you can do right, and so going home to salvage what's left of your day must always be first priority. So we ate a good lunch, cut our losses and headed home to get back into bed. It was a 5 hour waste of time, but it happens, and it hasn’t happened in a while so it’s ok.
Once home though, in our little haven outside of the madness of BJ we had a great dinner, caught up on some chores, watched grey's, did ironing and got a good night's sleep like really normal people. We are blessed in so many ways - I am one of the few in the world given the grace of a 4 day work week, so really how bad can things be.
1 comment:
Hey Meryl!
Just wanted to say HI. Thanks for all your updates! So facinating. I am quite jealous of the experinces you are having! Will send you famiy new soon.
Lots of love
Nikki
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