Thursday 24th January, 2013            2200

Ah, China - the land that is constantly in flux and making plans is hard to do, to bastardise a song title.

Far from making pizza today I am instead alone. I woke up to a text today saying that Qing had met the other teacher last night and it is obvious she hasn’t been impressed with either. Her father wants to send her to Nanjing to study but she wants to stay within strike distance of Tongling, at least for now. So, one of her friends is taking her to meet a private tutor tomorrow (hence she never came back) and afterwards she is going to Tongling to see Lucy. I met Lucy when I was there, she is a teacher from Swansea and is off this weekend to Thailand to spend the holidays. I know they are both good friends so I understand her wanting to say goodbye for a while. So, God knows when she will be here, hopefully early next week but one thing is for sure, I am not firming up next weekend in Hefei until I am as sure as it is possible here that we will actually go! I do miss her though…..

I wasn’t cooking pizza from scratch for one though so decided I would go downtown. Kevin wanted to meet up as he wanted to give me the main set of keys to his motorbike so that if he was burgled he would still have some. Unlikely considering his flat downtown has a door with more bolts than a bank vault door. I decided to do a bit of shopping first and then meet in the little Korean place. We actually met in the supermarket in the commercial centre. Lottemart has flour but no yeast - this is China - and stone me if the other place has yeast but no flour! Better still neither has margarine (butter is too much to ask) but I did manage to buy some bacon. What I wouldn’t do for some proper back bacon or a proper leg of ham.

Dinner was a nice change though, although I was sad to note after passing by on the bus thrice now that the Korean bbq restaurant down the road seems to have closed for good. It was a little pricey perhaps but the food was good. As I said, flux, businesses open, flourish and then for no apparent reason simply disappear. Maybe they got caught up in the horsemeat scandal.

Friday 25th        1930

What a lovely day again, peaking at 9C. Not that I have done much mind - aside from my laundry. Oh, and emailed my shopping list to Kevin who leaves in the morning. Just small things which annoyingly aren’t readily available such as salt and pepper cellars (you know, the cheap ones they use in greasy spoons), Atora suet and a couple of fuses - no such thing here which is fine except I need 1 and 13 amp fuses if my UK extension decides to blow up. Not the sort of thing you think to take anywhere because I never dreamed they weren’t available.

As for Qing, she will let me know in the morning if she will come back tomorrow. I will need to know early so I can make dough for pizzas and also to prevent me from going downtown shopping and eating. I hope she returns although I know she is having an evening with Lucy tonight, because if she does perhaps she will come with me to my little two hour gig at Helen’s school. After we may be taken for lunch but if not I will take her anyway.

I can’t believe how incredibly lucky I have been so far with winters here. The first one was awful with snow and bitter cold, last year was mild and this year aside from a fair dumping of white stuff a couple of weeks ago has turned decent as well. In fact Kevin - who hates cold weather with a passion - is going to blunder into far worse when he lands in the midlands! Heehee!