One After Another.

Whoaaa, what a day we had. Or rather, what a morning we had. It was ridiculous. Actually, I found the whole thing pretty entertaining and hilarious.

At 13:00, a resident from upstairs came knocking on our flat and started talking a load of Chinese. We had absolutely no idea what she was on about but after a while, in turned out that she was complaining about a load of noise she heard the past few nights, and she thought either we might've been the ones making the noise, or that we might've known where the noise was coming from. It wasn't us and no, we didn't know where it was coming from either, since we too had been hearing loud noises coming from the hallway - around midnight the other day, we got pretty scared as we heard some monster'ish noises coming from outside our door.

Anyway, in the end, the upstairs resident understood we weren't the noisy ones, and instead she started talking about how she had a granddaughter who could speak a tiny bit of English, and asked if we would help look after her, teach her English and cook for her or something. Not too sure what she was on about but we know she mentioned about having a granddaughter in her flat upstairs. So we said we'd help.

The lady went away and about 10minutes later she came back with her 8year old granddaughter.

After hanging around for a bit, the lady wanted to go back as she had stuff to do but unfortunately, the front door wouldn't open. Our flat has two doors, one is just like any other door, and then in front of that is another door which is made of metal (looks a bit like a prison door), and is the safety lock door as it's impossible to try open it without the actual key. Anyway, this metal door somehow jammed, yet we didn't understand why since it was working fine earlier. Tanya and the lady tried to push it open but it just wouldn't budge. The next door neighbours (the old lady and her grandson) came out and tried to help but the door still wouldn't move.

It took around 15minutes before we were set free. In the mean time, I just hanged around with the 8year old girl, who was running around the place saying how our flat was bigger than hers, and then comparing the two. I found out her English name is Angel, and her Chinese name is Lan Yun Yang 兰云扬 (although she said that's meant to be a secret). I also asked if I could take a picture of her, but she was too shy and started hiding. I guess I'll have to try again next time.

So once the door was open, the neighbours started analysing the door which got jammed, trying to figure out what exactly happened earlier. But whilst they were doing that, we got welcomed with another surprise. The new washing machine arrived!! We thought this was gonna be a good thing - it meant we'd be able to wash all our clothes and finally have clean stuff to wear again. But no. Because these people were just Amazon delivery men, they were just there to drop it off. But they did unbox it and put it in the bathroom for us.. Leaving the bathroom in a rather unusual state... :/

As you can see, the old washing machine has been placed directly under the shower, so no shower for us...

Once the delivery men, and all the neighbours left, Ibby and her brother arrived about 2minutes later. They were so lucky that they just missed all the fuss and worry.

We then discovered that there was nowhere to plug the new washing machine in since it was a three-pin plug, and the old one was a two-pin plug. There was only one three-pin plug in the bathroom and that was for the hot water. So Charlotte sent an angry email to the landlady explaining how the state of the apartment was not up to standards, and gave a list of all the things which needed moving or replacing, and that the flat seriously needed a proper clean.

Beth and I then explored off to BNU, as we were going to go to the Bank of China to open up a bank account for her. Unfortunately, we arrived just as the bank had closed. Talk about a day of misfortune.. D: So we decided to wander BNU campus, hoping to figure out how to get to the student accommodation building which we would be staying in. Which we did eventually find in the end. And even discovered that there were a row of small shops just outside it, as well as the Muslim canteen about a two minute walk away.

The variety of shops outside our student accommodation

Whilst venturing the university grounds, we happened to come across the on campus supermarket, which was a lot bigger than expected. They had literally everything, ranging from snack foods and drink, to cooking equipment and sauces, as well as the essential student stationary. There was even a small section of toys.

Anyway, we got back to the apartment at about 18:30 to find Charlotte, Tanya, Ibby, and her brother, along with a few extra people. The landlady was there with two cleaning ladies, and her husband. The apartment was finally getting a deep clean, new handles and lights were bought to replace the old, and the whole washing machine dilemma was being sorted out too. Hurray~

The apartment wasn't finished being sorted out until around 21:00, which in the meantime, Beth and I decided to go on an adventure to find a Wu Mart (Chinese Walmart) which Ibby and her brother told us they had found. We set out but half way there, we were thinking of turning back because it felt like we were never going to find it. But we did in the end. It was a half an hour walk away, which was longer than we thought it would take.

We did our shopping, and as we were about to check out at the till and leave, Charlotte texted asking if we could buy her some blu-tack. We thought that we could just go back in the shop and buy it after we had bought our stuff, since we were already at the till. However as we were about to enter the shop again, the two security people on either side of the entrance started shouting "Stop! Stop! No!" We got pretty scared. It turned out though that you weren't allowed to go back into the shop after you had bought something, and had no choice but to exit. So I took Beth's shopping bag and decided to wait outside, and told her to go get the blu-tack.

I came out and sat down, but after a good 10minutes, there was no Beth in sight coming out of the exit. I didn't really know what to do because she shouldn't have taken that long to buy some blu-tack and come out. So I texted Tanya saying I had possibly lost Beth, who replied with a laugh and that she couldn't do anything to help. Which I knew she couldn't since she was all the way in the apartment. A few minutes later, Beth appeared out of the exit, so we no longer had to worry.

We went back to the apartment, and had dinner at BLD Cafe just round the corner with the other lot.By the time the night had ended, I was pretty much dead from tiredness. I could've fallen asleep in the cafe if I could have.