It wasn't supposed to be like this.

And another couple of weeks go by with out a post…

You just can’t keep up here. I mean really, the pace of life is just too fast. Although, this week seems a little slower. It’s National Day (the founding of the People’s Republic of China) today. People take the whole week off. Well, they work the weekend before so that they can take five straight days. (In contrast to the French who would see it as a perfect excuse to “faire le pont” – literally “make the bridge” – by taking the whole week off and never think twice about not working!). In China, workers get Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off, but they work Saturday and Sunday to get Monday and Tuesday off.

Anyways, there’s a change in the air. People are walking the sidewalks slower. They’re strolling. No one’s rushing about. It’s weird actually. And I can actually get a seat in the morning on the subway. It’s eerily empty. Maybe that part is kind of refreshing. But it’s hard not to run at full tilt when I’ve been fighting my way through the metro every day for the last two months.

Unlike all my coworkers, I didn’t work the weekend. I’m trying to work this week like normal so that I can bank the holidays for later when Ryan and I have the money to travel. I thought it would be great. No one around to compete with. No one talking while I’m trying to conduct interviews. And then I get to use those vacation days whenever I want. But, it’s not working out so well. I guess they use the holiday as a time to do all the maintenance in the building. They’re tearing up the stairs right now. I’m absolutely blasting the Beach Boys on my I-pod to block out the noise. It’s happy music. And it makes me laugh at how absurd it is to be sitting here in a completely empty office, staring blankly at my computer screen, waiting for an email to pop into my inbox while they’re hammering away downstairs, wishing I was at the beach. Oh China…I can’t win.

In other news, our good friend, Melanie, from Switzerland is coming to visit on Friday! It’s so amazing that she’s actually coming. She works for Swiss (airline), so she can fly standby. It’s just cool when you talk about someone coming to visit you and then they actually come! I mean, we talked about her coming out when we were sitting in a café in Budapest in February. We’ve now seen her in France, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria and now China. Pretty cool.

I’m really excited to see her, but I’m a bit worried about how I will do as a tour guide/host. France I could do with my eyes closed. I spoke the language. I knew what to expect. I knew where to take people for the “wow factor.” But here, I still get cheated. I can barely direct a taxi. I’ve been to the Bund (the main tourist area) once. I eat the same food every day to save money. I mean, seriously, when I get home from work all I want to do is go to the gym and watch one of the hundreds of DVDs we got from Sue Foster (Side note: Sue sent over a box containing literally hundreds of DVDs for us! We won’t need to ever buy another DVD in China). I’m sure we’ll find good things to show Mel. Foot massages every day, right? Can’t be too bad a vacation if that’s all you do.

I just wish I liked China more. When you love a place, visitors get to see the good side through your eyes. I just want her to have a good time, despite the fact that we’re still trying to understand why we’re in Shanghai.

The apartment continues to be the best thing about China thus far. It is so comfortable and nice to come home to. We do have a maid – an “ayi” (sounds like “I-E”) as they call them here. Her name is Zhang and she’s like the sweetest little Chinese woman ever. She charges us a whopping 20 RMB (the equivalent of $2.90 USD) an hour. She speaks one word of English (“bye”), but we communicate somehow. We just end up laughing. It’s these kind of exchanges that are so nice in China. She doesn’t get mad at us for not speaking Chinese and we don’t get mad at her for not speaking English. It’s just a fact of life. She comes three times a week. One solid day of cleaning and laundry and two short days of light cleaning and cooking. I’ve eaten her vegetarian dumplings three nights in a row now. I could eat them all month! It’s actually saving us money in that sense. Ryan and I would go to Carrefour and drop $50 on groceries buying Western foods (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are still a staple). But Zhang goes, buys Chinese foods and brings us a receipt for $4. I can eat four meals for like $10 when she cooks. She does have an advantage though. She can actually read the labels! I might buy Chinese food too if I could read the ingredients…except for the milk of course…That whole scandal is absolutely horrific. I mean, the US adds bad things to its milk, but they do it indirectly through the cows. In the PRC, they just add the chemicals directly to the milk! Way to go.

Other than that, I’m getting through. I go to work. I come home. Ryan and I hang out. I go to bed. My happiest times each day are spent kicking back in front of the TV with Ryan, watching Blue Planet and sometimes CNN (Only when they’re making fun of Sarah Palin. Not when they’re talking about the US economy going down the tube.), eating Zhang’s delicious dumplings. Other than that, I worry a lot. The fire drained my savings and with Ryan not working yet (more on that in a second), we are actually broke. We’ve paid off our rent until December, but all the money I earn right now from EF will go into saving for the next three installments. Literally, all of my salary goes to the apartment. I have 5 RMB (about 65 cents) leftover. It’s a great place to live and I probably wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s where I can turn off China and that’s invaluable. But, it comes at a price. We just thought Ryan would be working by now, almost 8 weeks after we arrived in Shanghai.

Ryan’s tourist visa expires next Saturday. We will have been in the country for 60 days. Lenox is trying to work things out with Deloitte. It looks like Ryan will have to leave the country, perhaps go to Japan or Thailand to renew his tourist visa. The company needs to apply for a work permit, which can take weeks. Then he will need to go back to the States at a later point to apply for a work visa. But the real problem is that during this whole time while they're figuring out the logistics, we won’t have the two incomes we were counting on when we signed our lease.

Adult problems. This is what I keep thinking. This is what it’s like to be an adult, to constantly worry about money. I mean, thank god Ryan and I are on the same page, or our relationship would be taking a hit. But, it’s tough. I know there are people worse off, much worse off. It’s not that I’m feeling sorry for myself. I’m still grateful that I have a job, that I’m trying to live my dream, that I had the courage to come over here. It’s just a lot harder that I imagined.

At least we don’t have expensive tastes. I mean, I can eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for days on end to save a buck. But, it’s out of our control which is the frustrating part. We came here to work. We came here to live a modest life and save a little bit of money. Ryan can’t even work, so our modest lifestyle is looking more and more glum. It’s turning into the same meals every single day and not going out with friends because we can’t afford it.

Not exactly what I dreamt about…