Mondays

Why is it that the most annoying of circumstances ususally happen on Monday mornings? Here's what happened to me yesterday.
My toilet flooded my bathroom. Nice huh? It wasn't a flooding from the toilet bowl due to clogging...the water was coming out of the top of the tank. I took the lid off and all the parts seemed to be in the right places doing the right things. Thanks to many years on an all-female camp staff, I learned a think or two about toilet repair. But, this is China and nothing I pulled, pushed, turned, or moved made any difference. Water is still spilling over on to my floor. I'm almost late for work already and I don't have the time or energy to deal with a broken toilet. I know that a temporary solution is just to turn the water off completely and deal with it when I get back.
The problem is...the knob that turns off the water looks like it hasn't been turned in years and I can't budge it. Not even a little. I try to turn it to the right, no movement whatsoever. I know it should be righty-tighty but I try lefty just to see what happens. A little more movement than to the right, but not enough to do anything.
I don't know any of my neighbors really. (Here's where I regret not writing back that kid who lives downstairs who left the note on my door, because maybe he has a strong dad who would have been nice enough to come upstairs and turn off my water). I have seen a retired man in the stairway before and I think he lives across the hall so I try knocking on that door. No one answers. Water is still leaking onto the floor.
I know the gate man at my complex so I decide to go down and see if he will help me. I dread this because he speaks local dialect, not standard Chinese, and I can understand about one in ten words that he says. I walk down there. He's not there.
Some random guy I've never seen before in my life is washing his car. "Excuse me sir. Hi. I have a problem in my house and I can't turn off the water. Could you come up and help me. It will just take a moment." He agrees. I let the random man I have never seen before in my life into my house, give him some pliers, and let him do his thing.
I know that a great number of things in this country are backwards from the way they are in America so why I thought even for a moment that righty-tighty lefty-loosey would apply in this situation is beyond me. I watched Mr. Random Car Washer turn the knob left and watched the water stop spilling over the sides the toilet. I thank him for his service and get my stuff together to go to work.
Off to work. Because of all the rush of a flooding toilet. I forgot to bring a very essential item with me to work...a shirt. Of course I was wearing a shirt, but since it's Monday my suit had been dry cleaned over the weekend and I thought I had a shirt in my locker, but I didn't. And the tank top I'm wearing is not one I can get away with wearing according to their 4 star dress code. (This part of the story may be weird for America, but our hotel actually has an employee locker room where eveyrone changes. It's nice not to have to bike to work in a suit). I could go back home to get one, but that's at least 35 minutes round trip and I'm already short on time. I call an American friend who lives really close to the hotel and ask to borrow a shirt. Run from the hotel, to her house, and back and make it into the office only 5 minutes late.
Get off work and come home, knowing I now have to find some way to repair a broken toilet if I want to have water in the rest of my house. In all the stairways there are all kinds of numbers like stamped or graffittied, which doesn't look good, but useful in such a situation. I go out into my hallway. I see numbers for drain un-cloggers, real estate agents, and other services not useful to me. I find one that I recogize as the word for plumbing, but when I called I found out it was only for installing new plumbing. Not what I need.
I call information. They give the number to a plumber. The plumber's office give me some dudes cell phone. The number doesn't connect. I seriously need help at this point. I call a local friend. She calls the plumber number back and gets the cell phone of another guy. He can't come. But, he refers her to yet ANOTHER guy who then calls me to get directions to my house. Wow, this is getting long. He comes, looks at it, tells me he needs some part, leaves to get the part, comes back, fixes it, and we're done. Until it came time to pay. He says, "How about you not pay me for this and instead just teach my daughter English." No sir. How about you just tell me how much a 10 minute toilet repair costs. "She's a really good student." I'm glad, but I'm very busy and I have another job. How much. "I won't charge you anything. It won't even be like teaching. It will just be talking with her to practice her English." HOW MUCH?!?!? He accepts 50 kuai and I go back to eating the hummus I made for dinner and watching a DVD of The Office Aubrey sent me in the mail. That's my Monday story.

pictures

Mandy and her mom left Friday morning. It was so good to have a few days away in the big city and great to have friends see my life here. Here's the first round of pictures.

cute

Cute little girl, right? I thought so too.
One of my American friends here just spent some time in the countryside. Here's what he had to say about the subject of the above picture:

"Things are going well here, but they can often border on the strange...and to date the strangest is that SHE is really a HE.
So I was out spreading manure on parts of the grassland with my neighbor and his little girl when IT happened. Mother nature called the little girl...Only I was shocked to realize that mother nature had called that little girl much more like it calls little boys. I pondered and I wondered about the meaning... and wondered if my eyes had deceived me... after all I was a ways away. But no, later Mother Nature called again, and my cute feisty little 4 yr old neighbor girl is really a ornery 4 yr old boy! Which did explain a lot about why he/she was such a daddy's girl and loved tractors, motorcycles, etc... so much. They do that because they don't want the spirits to know it is a little boy and harm it. I'd heard of that but I'd never actually seen it. "

I'm not sure what commentary to make so I'll just let the story speak for itself.

the test scores are in...so much for language progress

我退步了!
I went by my old university yesterday to see if the test scores were in yet. They weren't. But, the teacher told me that you could access your scores on the internet. I got up the courage to check it out today. I actually made two points less on my overall score than last time, but my level rating was the same. Here are the section totals:
Listening 6 (compared with a 5 last time)
Grammar 6 (5)
Reading Comprehension 3 (4)
Comprehensive fill in the blank 4 (4)
Overall...I got a 4. (My goal was a 6).
So, I improved in two sections, but obviously my reading still needs some work. I would like complain at this point that one article was about blowfish. I, of course, did not know the word for blowfish but looked it up when I got home. I did not prepare for vocabulary related to aquatic animals.
Another day in life of a language learner.