Friday 20^th April, 2018 2140

Thursday was a welcome return to teaching English majors. It restored my sanity and to an extent, my mood. I cannot recall a bleaker teaching day than Wednesday.

The problem on Thursday however was that half an hour before my last class finished we had a thunderstorm. With the edge of the Gobi desert on our doorstep, storms are a rare occurrence. I had gone to work in shirtsleeves, the forecast had said sunshine and so it was until then.

I was showing the class Master and Commander (boring for them I suppose but they had decided against Alien – they will watch it at some point though!) and Alice came to sit at the back with me to ask what was happening in the film. Unless you were at sea, even native English speakers would fail to understand a lot of what is said.

The storm started. Alice asked if I had an umbrella. I never have an umbrella. This time not even a jacket. With an unbounded confidence even I did not fully believe (remember, rain is a rare commodity here) I asserted with authority that the rain would stop by end of class.

It didn't.

In fact it was the worst rain I have seen here. Not on a Chizhou monsoon scale but bad enough and of course the engineering re building works completely failed to take rain into consideration so that roads were ankle deep very quickly and outside stairs became waterfalls.

Bless Alice, for she told Andy the Cleaner to meet me on the ground floor and escort me home under his brolly. I was accused of being stubborn when I refused the offer, pointing out it wasn't cold and that it was only water and I showered every day. Yes I got damp, even saw Annie coming in on the way out, squelching in her cloth shoes. I was wearing my leather ones which have been polished so much that by now they are virtually waterproof.

And it was a violent thunderstorm, so much so that an hour later all internet was lost. Now, in Chizhou, long before then the internet, electricity and power would have disappeared but at least here it was only my connection. I was still annoyed nonetheless. But I had BBC programmes downloaded to amuse me.

Last night I had a terrible time sleeping. It wasn't the sound of the rain pinging off the burglar cages, simply bad dreams the whole night. I suppose I woke for a pee at maybe three and never actually drifted back off after that. As always, when the alarm went off at five I could have slept until lunch.

The internet was not back when I got up. In fact the entire university network on all three campuses was still down. It still is. Dean tells me it may be fixed tomorrow.

Tomorrow Adriana is coming to stay the night. She doesn't want to eat too much. That's fine, I will make curry and chapattis and not bother with dessert except some tinned fruit and ice cream. Then we will go to the gin bar and meet Dean.

I just hope by then we will have the internet back again. I really don't want to have to keep going to the hotel for their wifi – this morning Pizza Hut's was so slow it couldn't connect me to my email or Facebook.

Saturday 0700

Internet finally reappeared just after ten last night but by then it was bedtime!