Dec. 14, 2016
11:00 pm
Beijing, China
Yeah, so I lied.
I’m so sorry for being super absent over the past few days. I totally failed on updating you guys at all. Again, it’s been a little rough recently and I’ve really just wanted to go home and go to bed after the day was finished. That said, here’s what’s been going on in Kristen’s life.
So Sunday was like any other Sunday. Candice co-taught my Small Star Blue class (3-yr-olds) for a little while and I also had my Small Star Bs that afternoon. After work, Taylor and I met up in Wangfujing and went shopping for a bit. I finished up my Christmas shopping and she shared in the experience. We had a lot of fun and got to catch up, something we haven’t been able to do for a while.
Monday was a bit of a crazy day. Even though I didn’t have any classes, I still had a lot of work to do. I did some lesson planning and tried to get all of my work done (totally didn’t finish as much as I needed to). We met another new teacher, but I didn’t get to talk to him much. Most importantly, though, Monday was Gretchen’s last day. It was a sad time at the office. Although the day went by normally, the fact that she was leaving was a constant thought in everyones’ minds. She got some gifts and some cards. There were quite a few tears. Friday is definitely going to be tough when she doesn’t show up at the office. It’s crazy how much I’m going to miss her. I mean, I’ve only known her for a couple of months, but she’s been such a strong support and mentor to me while I’ve been here. Abba knew that I’d need a strong, Ch—stian role model to help guide me through this transition and I am so grateful that He placed Gretchen in my life. I’m wishing her the absolute best as she starts this new chapter of her life and I p—y that Abba provides her with the support system He provided me.
Upon finishing a long day of work, I returned to my apartment to find that the outlets were not working. I sent a message to the guy who works in the building, but it was late and he didn’t get back to me. I wasn’t too worried, and I was able to charge my phone using my laptop, so it was okay. I could get by until they fixed it. After I’d dealt with that as much as I could (and had run my milk down to Brian’s fridge), I decided to FaceTime my cousin Sylvia to wish her a happy birthday. It was awesome to get to talk with her for a bit. We had some fun catching up and chatting. She informed me that her new little girl was coming soon (as in like a couple days from that conversation) and I’m super excited to welcome her into the family from thousands of miles away! It was a great way to end a long and exhausting day.
But even the emotions of Monday was completely overshadowed by yesterday’s fiasco. I slept in on Tuesday because, hey, it was my day off and I was tired. I woke up around 11 to find that none of the lights in my apartment would work. I couldn’t turn on my lights, my water heater, my washing machine, nothing worked. I messaged the guy again, thinking that they’d mistakenly turned off my electricity even though I paid my bill on Monday morning. The message I received back from him was not encouraging. About a half hour later, another guy who works for the building came up to look at my fuse box. He tried to turn it on from there and it didn’t work. Then he went into the hallway and tried again. This time, the lights turned on for a quick second and then blew out with an extremely loud POP! He came back a few hours later with a maintenance guy to check it out. Same thing happened. They stayed for maybe a quarter of an hour and then left. As they left, the guy from earlier told me “Okay” and smiled. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, because my electricity still wasn’t working. I then got a text from the man I had messaged earlier to say that something was wrong with my wiring and they were contacting someone to come fix it. I was afraid to leave my apartment after that because I wasn’t sure when they were coming. They arrived around 7:30 and were in my room for a while, checking out the crawl space above my ceiling and then they just left. I sat there in silence and complete darkness, not sure what to do in that situation.
So, here’s what I’ve found out since then. Apparently the apartment above mine has had a water leak which has damaged the electrical wiring in my apartment. As such, they are going to have to repair the damage before they can return electricity to my apartment. I have no idea exactly what they’re doing, but they’re supposedly working on it. While they’re doing that, I have been moved into another apartment in the building. I had to pack up most of my stuff this morning and move down to the fourth floor. I don’t know how long I’m going to be here or when I will be able to return to my apartment. Like I said, most of my stuff is with me (especially my valuables), but some of it I left upstairs. It’s not as bad as it may sound. The men who run my building have been very helpful, accommodating, and apologetic for the inconvenience. And I’m lucky, the result of an upstairs leak on my wires could have been a lot more dangerous, like an electric fire or a flooded apartment. I’m in a room where I have hot water, electricity, and heat. I’m not homeless or living in a hotel. I’m perfectly fine. It’s just a minor inconvenience, and I’m not super upset about it. It was just a bit of a pain that I had to deal with that yesterday and I’m back to living out of a suitcase again. I do hope I can move back in soon.
Today, after moving my stuff to the other apartment, I went with Nicole, Ashlee, and Brian to the foreign bookstore at Wangfujing. What was supposed to be a 3 hour trip ended up becoming a 10 hour trip! We went to the bookstore and browsed for a little while, maybe a half hour. Then we went to Dunkin Donuts to grab some coffee and donuts (big surprise there). We got our food and found a few chairs situated around the fake fireplace. As we ate, we started to talk about a bunch of different stuff, work, our families, where we’d come from, tons of stuff. The conversation was great and we were all enjoying ourselves. There were some moments where the conversation would lull and we’d find ourselves sitting in silence and simply staring at the fireplace. It was never awkward or uncomfortable.
We ended up sitting at Dunkin Donuts for over 5 hours! We didn’t even realize how long we’d been there until we started getting hungry again. So we left the coffee shop and started our way through the mall. We checked out a couple of stores as we tried to decide where to eat. We ended up finding this Mexican restaurant on the top floor and decided to try it. It was wonderful! The food was great and, once again, we were laughing and sharing stories. The entire night was filled with laughter and good times. Finally, around 9:30, we grabbed some blizzards from Dairy Queen (yep, they have those here) and headed back to Yizhuang.
Now I’m currently sitting on the bed of my temporary apartment trying to keep myself awake as I finish typing this up. As you can see, the past few days have been full of lots of craziness. For those of you who know me well, you know that expecting me to have a calm life is just naïve.
Sorry once again for my lack of communication. I will try to do better in the coming days.
Talk to you soon,
Kristen
