Monday 27th June, 2016                 1230

My rather odd life continues with unabated twists and turns. On Saturday evening my notarised documents arrived and yesterday Joan mailed them to Hefei. Today I need to photograph them and email to the agency.

However, the agent has just Skyped that she has a university in Xuchang in Henan province that can transfer me without any of the red tape which has plagued me to date with Changzhou. I am now in a quandary. Do I wait to see if I can get the paperwork to allow me to go to Changzhou or do I jump at the path of least resistance?

Both pay the same although very temptingly Xuchang offers the option to earn 50% more for teaching 24 classes instead of 16 a week. Very tiring but also real food for thought. Xuchang doesn’t have any western restaurants listed on Trip Advisor though……..

Can’t hurt to take a look at the contract though. I wish this had come up before I splashed out fistfuls of money though.

We have horrible rain here and it seems set for the week, possibly with the very heavy stuff that has caused flooding elsewhere along the Yangtse arriving in a couple of days. I was supposed to meet Balance for lunch but she never replied to my text this morning. My guess is she slept late because she replied ten minutes ago suggesting we have dinner instead. I may food shop after just in case it is torrential tomorrow and I can’t (or don’t want to!) get to town.

Tuesday 28th                         1930

Well I certainly had dinner (steak like leather) but I never went shopping except to the smallest “big” supermarket where I found liver. RT don’t do it so on a whim I bought a load with a view to making pate again.

And boy what a night it was!

I had intended on getting an early one but again that went by the board. I couldn’t watch the Italy v Spain match due to internet speed but I followed it on text and then overcame lethargy (having nodded off in the chair earlier) and decided to see if, at 0300 the internet would be fast enough for me to see England trounce Iceland.

Well I never got that far. My laptop froze and of course having had a few sherbets I HAD to try and fix it there and then. It ended with a restoration and then the vpn refused to work so another hour was spent uninstalling and reinstalling that! By the time I had finished it was 0700.

And the rain had been bucketing down all night.

After four hours kip I got up. I needed to shop for a few bits for the pate. Joan showed me some photos on her phone of the roads on the lower side of the campus - completely flooded. Not a problem on an e-bike, I often go through six inch deep puddles without problem. It was still chucking it down but I was intrepid.

It was great until I got to the back of the teaching block when I was confronted by a flood that appeared to be a bit more than six inches, so I turned around and went over to the other side of campus where the roads are all gradients. All was well.

Until I got down to near the south gate. In the six years I have been here I have never seen anything like it. I suddenly found myself in a foot of water watching students wading barefoot carrying their shoes. The bike could handle that  so carefully I rode slowly on. Assuming the level was similar outside, I exited with the intention of parking the bike  near the bus stop. I found myself in water that later I observed by watching people sloshing though it, was knee deep! That of course was well over the level of my footwell so my trotters got soaked but to my enormous relief the bike never shorted out.

I got out of the Aegean Sea and parked up to wait for a bus.

Except the buses weren’t chancing it. They were coming into the road and then turning around 200 yards from me. No way was I going knee deep for that distance so I stood and ruminated for a while, hoping at least one driver would chance it - after all, the SUVs were making it.

In the end I went to the office, worried that if I tried to go home the bike would be swamped. After two bottles the rain had eased  so I sallied forth. The water was still as deep and by now Anhui Provincial TV Broadcasting were there filming as the maintenance workers were sandbagging south gate. Come to think of it, they probably filmed me as I went through the torrent that had appeared by that time and where water was pouring over the speed humps into the school.

Having really set my sights on making pate, instead of being sensible and just going home, I rode to west gate and down to another bus stop, where I boarded a 29 bus. The pate should be cooked in a few minutes and all I can say is that after the effort I made I sincerely hope I didn’t bugger it up!