The China Chronicles

This is a picture of the wires that go around my ceiling, and the reason that they were sparking is because one of them is obviously completely burnt. That made me feel nice and safe. Luckily, my wires are fixed now and my electricity works, but getting it that way was kind of an interesting experience. The electrician came over. He is probably no bigger than my brother--my 12 year old brother. He brought in a ladder that had the bottom rung missing, and then he climbed to the very top. You know how ladders in the States have the warnings that say do not stand any higher than this step? Ladders in China do not have that. Then he proceeded to work on my electrical wiring WITHOUT TURNING OFF THE ELECTRICITY. Here he is, poking at things with his metal pliers and I am thinking, "Oh no, he is going to die right here in my apartment, and then what am I going to do?" I was pretty sure that even if he didn't electricute himself, he'd fall off the ladder and break his neck, and I'm not quite sure what the protocol is for having a small dead Chinese man in your home. Thankfully, he survived and after my 2 1/2 day stint of pretending to be Amish, I now have heat and light. I'm still a little puzzled as to why he didn't turn the electricity off before he started cutting things, but whatever. There are a lot of things in China I just don't get.

Now that my electricity is in relatively good shape, my toilet is broken. I pushed the button to flush it and the entire button kind of caved in. It's built in to the center of the ceramic lid, so I thought maybe it had just fallen off of whatever holds it, and I could fix it. Clearly, based on the last two sentences, I know nothing about plumbing. But that didn't stop me. I took off the lid and dinked around, kind of like the guys who look under the hoods of cars and unscrew things and grunt like they are mechanics, but they end up pouring the radiator fluid into the wiper fluid reservoir. I tried to figure out how to reattach the button, but as you have probably figured out by now (or you should have figured out by now if you have been paying any attention). . .I couldn't fix it. So now the lid for the toilet tank/reserve/thingy on top of the toilet is on my bathroom floor, along with the parts for the button, and the water won't stop running. Not that it matters a whole lot since Chinese toilets don't have any water in the bowl. Charlie is going to call the maintenance staff to fix it (because they'll be so thrilled to be at my house again), but in the meantime, as soon as I get into the bathroom, I start filling up the bucket of water to pour down the toilet. Nothing like manual flushing.

Today, Liz and I helped Joni move, and for one reason or another, she was incredibly rude and condescending to us. She talked to me really slowly, like I was either six years old or a non-native speaker. I freakin speak English woman! But, by the grace of the father, I held my tongue. And that is all I am going to say about that or I will go on for another twelve paragraphs.

posted by Sara @ 5:24 AM