Our walls are dripping. That's right, dripping! Everything here is made so poorly that it seems as though we will never have a "normal" problem free house to live in!
Anywhoo...
Had my first big meeting today with my neighbors Stefanie and Mary. These lovely ladies started the Suzhou Sports Club about three years ago. This is basically a club designed to emulate the Saturday Soccer leagues that we have at home. They said that when they moved here, there were no extra curricular sport activities for expat children. I, in all my wisdom (aka desperate stupidity and need to fit in) have volunteered to take over running the organization, as they will both be stepping down. What, you may ask, makes me qualified to run any organization when I barely manage to run my own household? Nothing. I have no qualifications other than I am the only poor shlup to step up and say "I will do it". So my head was spinning after said meeting with all the ways I will fail at this task and sorely disappoint children and parents alike! Not to mention that I had Starbucks on the way to Mandarin Lessons today, or as we call it xim ba qu ca fe, and was crashing hard from my wonderful caffeine rush. Then the man from the "Decoration Company" came, along with the realtor guy who just walks into my house any time he wants, and said the problem with my wet walls is because it rained so hard that the water was leaking in through the foot of concrete that is our wall. Yeah... right.
We are looking forward to next week. It is a holiday here, I'm really not sure for what, but Rich and Brody get the week off. We plan to explore some of the cultural high points of Suzhou. Not sure what those will be exactly, but stay tuned...
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2 comments:
Gotta love ambiguous holidays! You need one of those stickers for the back on Jin's car with a soccer ball "International Soccer Mom" on the top and "Dani" underneath! You're a superstar! No matter what you do, it's gotta be better then the disorganized mess that is SVNorth Youth Soccer!
Hope the walls get potty trained! Love you.
Hey, Dani
I’m sorry – Whitney and I underestimated your blogging talents – this is awesome! You are our blogging hero!
Sorry to hear about the ‘new construction’ woes….is the developer Ryan Homes, by chance? Ha! Hopefully you’ll look back on all of this in a couple of years and laugh at how much you had to learn about the ‘Chinese way’…
Good luck with the soccer program – I’m sure you will do great at it! Do you know how to play soccer – just wondering because I do not and neither does Jon and he is coaching Ellie’s soccer team this year….so I believe we have proof that you don’t even need to know how to play the game to be a great coach! Just imagine what little you have to know to run the program…and you know way more than that! (Are you following my logic?) :-) Seriously, you have done a super job with so many other things and you will do great at this, too. I’m sure the players and parents will value your fresh perspective, new ideas and organization – you go, girl!
OK - I did a little search on the upcoming holiday and it seems to be "Golden Week". Here is a snippit about it (Dani, you already know this but for other cluess 'bloggers' like me?): "Three days paid holiday are given, and the surrounding weekends were re-arranged so that workers in Chinese companies always had seven continuous days of holiday. These national holidays were first started by the government for PRC's National Day in 1999 and are primarily intended to help expand the domestic tourism market and improve the national standard of living, as well as allowing people to make long-distance family visits. The Golden Weeks are consequently periods of greatly heightened travel activity."
Still don't quite understand it but there you go...
It’s so great to hear the updates and about your experiences –keep ‘em coming!
Cheri
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