Sunday 13th December, 2015                         1930

Even on days when I don’t have to wake up early I still do regardless of what time I turn in. I would happily pay to get one night a week where I could wake up in the morning feeling refreshed.

Of course by now my cold has reached the stage where the cough arrives so naturally today I have felt like a bag of rusty spanners. With payday being late again though I  had to go and play games with small children, thankfully none of whom cried on this occasion - or if they did I was nowhere near.

Christmas? Talk to me about Christmas and the well deserved rest? Don’t give me apoplexy!

Next Sunday I am the Santa judge at a speaking competition, a week Friday the hospital thing and the rest of Christmas day is in flux. Richard is decamping to Changsha as I think I said and Andrei is sweating on getting his tourist visa extension, failing which he will probably be in the air when we are supposed to be eating, on his way to France to get another visa. Quite why the school can’t “employ” him as a supernumary with no salary so he can get the same residence permit as us, I know not. They certainly have sufficient guanxi in this city to push it through.

The foreign affairs bureau want to treat me to lunch after the hospital but there is no way I can eat both lunch and dinner so I have placed it in abeyance for now, instead saying perhaps I would have some nibbles and gallons of pijou, explaining why of course. If there is to be no foreign dinner then to hell with it, I will make full use of the lunch! I also won’t have to pay……

On boxing day I have been asked to go to Uncle Sam’s party for the kids as Santa. It’s in the evening and I can now make it because the Lingdian society has cried off due to many students having exams that day - phew. The only time I really get to do absolutely nothing is the spring festival and the weather is so bloody cold all I want to do is stay indoors anyway.

This morning I had the bright idea of cutting off the top of the exam marks sheet ready for photocopying in order to remove the old heading. Idiot that I am, I never realised that by so doing I would eradicate students 29 and 30 from the reverse of the page! Thankfully the copier people under the library saved the day and still managed to remove “Summer 2013” from the front page. I have extra copies now so in the summer I can get more made - who needs to be able to put something on a memory stick?!!

When I finished this evening I went shopping for sweet treats from Yumeic, God was it heaving, and they say the Chinese don’t eat sweet things, got a few bits and hit RT Mart but not for a lot.

The buses were more reminiscent of Indian trains so of course I cheated. The drivers are all getting to know me now but the one I caught tonight going the wrong way clearly didn’t understand my thinking and strategy. He obviously knew I wanted to go the other way and I am sure was trying to point out it was costing me twice the money. Whether I conveyed the message that I would rather sit than stand is debatable but I did my best.  

So tomorrow sees what is probably my last week of classes with my chicks. I still want to know the truth behind it but whether I will get it is anyone’s guess. It has completely thrown all my plans and I really think it unfair on both sets of students but my contract simply states that the school will give me teaching work so I can’t rock the boat because “morally” never applies here, let alone attachment.

Such is life in the Middle Kingdom.