Under Construction

The following message has been copied and pasted straight off of Camille's blog. I wanted to tell you the exact same message, so why not make my life a little easier by copying hers? I know I haven't written a blog post in a while, but this will explain part of the reason why. Also, I just got my vpn working again, after about 3 weeks without it, (a vpn is what allows me onto to specific websites such as my blog and facebook that are blocked in the country I currently live in). So now that its up and running, you can expect more exciting posts in the future. Just a forewarning, this post is mostly informational and not exactly exciting!

From Camille:

I know it's been awhile.  Partially it's my fault and partially it's China's fault.   Overall, it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks.  Lesley and I are officially nomads roaming around the city of Huangshi with limited internet access, hence my lack of blogging here recently.  I'll break the story down for you.  

On December 2, Les and I were having a lovely Sunday evening at our apartment hanging out with Dawn when we heard a knock on our door.  It was our neighbor from the apartment below us.  She was talking 90 miles a minute, so of course Les and I had no clue what was going on.  Thankfully Dawn was there and was able to translate.  Apparently, water was leaking into her apartment from our apartment.   We called our boss and she said she would take care of it the next day, but we should turn off our water.  I quickly jumped into the shower, not knowing it would be my last wonderfully hot one for a long, long time.  

The next morning, we packed a few things so we could stay at our dorm room at school for a few days until the leaking pipe in our floor could be fixed.  Well to cut a very long story short, a few days has now turned into 2 weeks.  Since the pipe was broken, which meant our entire bathroom floor had to be ripped up, the school decided to "decorate" (remodel) our entire bathroom.  This sounds amazing and in the end I'm sure it will be, but right now it's not very fun.  

The school said the repairs and remodel would take about 15 days.  Les and I have become well aware that China deadlines aren't real.  So when they say 2 weeks, you should go ahead and double it and that is a more accurate timeline.  Two weeks have passed since we moved out and here is the current state of our bathroom/apartment.  

This picture was taken the first time we went to the apartment, during the destruction phase. 

The inside of our bathroom.

The current state of our dining room. Yes, that is a huge pile of debris and dirt.

The current state of our bathroom. Looks like they got the concrete down.

So to sum it up, we are now living at school in our dorm room Monday to Friday and a hotel on the weekends. We are prying to be back in our apartment by Christmas, but as you can see from the picture it's not likely.  Right now Les and I are struggling with a lack of sleep from very hard beds and some stomach problems from all the cafeteria food we have to eat.  (Our dorm room doesn't have a kitchen, so we have to eat what the kids eat everyday)  If you could be prying for those two issues specifically, it would be much appreciated.  

Sorry this blog is a bit of a downer, but just wanted to let everyone know what's been going on and why I haven't been able to keep in touch as often as I like to.  We are surviving and trying to keep up our good spirits.  This is China and some things just don't always go as planned.  Hopefully, we will be able to ring in the new year back in our apartment with our brand new Western toilet!