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Patrick is still at work and it is midnight.

I am torn between feeling horribly sorry for him that they have to get whatever road or bridge it is they are building finished by this evening, and secretly glad he is really going to understand the meaning of hard work now.

It’s still 27 degrees or so now, so not such a nice environment to be outdoors all day either. I am getting a bit bored waiting for him to come home though, and rather hungry as he is bringing dinner…

I have amused myself by having a nap, taking the dog for a walk, washing everything I can find, studying beauty blogs, and finally giving myself a facial.

I think I am going to be good at this housewife stuff.

All I need to do now is work out our new address so I can start online shopping at MoMA Store…

I seem to have slowed to the China pace now, I think it’s a week since I wrote here.

We had dinner with Patrick’s coach and various other sports people this evening, and as the conversation drifted to sport, as it usually does, I think I began to stare listlessly at the wall.

The sports masseuse must have felt a bit sorry for me so decided then and there to fix the muscles in my neck and shoulders that suffer a little from all my computer use.

The pain! I think I will stop using the computer so much if that is what it takes to fix the damage it does. He is excellent at what he does though, and has been sent all over the world to fix various sports injuries, so I am looking forward to a healthy feeling neck once the pain subsides…

Patrick busily translated all the advice for me and then told me that he was also going to teach me to write Chinese. I was a little confused by the Chinese writing bit, but quite impressed this man was not only an expert at sports massage, but also a teacher of calligraphy.

Eventually I came to understand that the Chinese writing is imaginary writing I will do in the air with my forehead to exercise my neck. What fun exercise! Now I will not only learn Chinese characters, but also keep my neck healthy.

Today was the first of all our days here that it was actually cool enough for me to want to leave the house when I didn’t actually have to.Patrick took me to see Baohe Park and Zheng Bao pavilion. Although I had lived in Hefei for a year previously, I had never spent any time in the park or climbed the pavilion, so I am glad I managed to finally get around to it.

There are a lot of terribly misspelt and completely incomprehensible signs around Hefei, I have stolen menus in the past just because I found them so highly amusing. I don’t usually bother to take photos because there are just so many odd signs to be seen, but I took one today of a sign in Baohe park, as I just couldn’t understand how they had managed to complicate the message so much, and it made me smile.

How can you put your step on the green grass

Are they angry? As in “how could you??!!” I am not sure…

We were also given a final date for our apartment completion today. After weeks of being messed around by the builders, Patrick went to see them with the government official in charge of Hefei’s building and development or something-or-other, and we’ve now been assured it will be ready in 10 days.

I so hope it’s ready by then, I want to go and buy house stuff!!

Our car isn’t going to be ready for another two weeks either. I still haven’t worked out exactly what everyone is up to during all this waiting time, I bet there is a lot of nothing going on.

I highly recommend anyone who suffers from a lack of patience to come and live in China a while, if you don’t die of frustration, you’ll be cured forever.

Patrick brought Chandler home yesterday.

Chandler is a lovely 5 year old Golden Retriever and is very well behaved… he even smells nice.

Now I absolutely can’t wait to move to the new apartment so we can take him for lots of walks each day around the lake.

We took him for a walk there this afternoon and I discovered the added bonus of having a large dog… Everybody is too busy staring at him to stare at me! Yay!

We haven’t got the car yet though, I had forgotten that “soon” in China means “Possibly this year”… Still waiting! I look forward to taking Chandler our for drives and discovering all Hefei’s parks.

At the moment Patrick hails a cab while Chandler and I hide behind a bus stop and then we all quickly bundle into the car before the driver can comprehend what is happening and tell us that dogs are not allowed. The drivers are usually stunned into silence when a foreigner AND a great big orange bear of a dog magically materialise, so we generally get away with it.

We are picking up our new car in the next few days I think. Life should become a little more comfortable after that.

Yesterday our three modes of transport for the day included a taxi, a scooter and a company car.

The taxi had only one handle for winding up the windows, so we all had to hurriedly pass it around when it suddenly began to rain.

The scooter was fun, but I was in charge of holding the umbrella as Patrick drove, and I am not very good at that.  It is very difficult not to smack Patrick in the face with it as it blows inside out and all about.  I don’t think that is very safe.

Finally we took a company car in the afternoon, which I think has served the company for a very long time.  The hand brake gets stuck and generally takes two men or five minutes to un-stick.  Unfortunately Patrick has the unconscious habit of pulling the hand brake everytime we stop in traffic.  It took a very long time to get home.

We were undecided about which car we wanted, so went to test drive the second today.  We were taken for a demonstration drive as well as a test drive.

I didn’t think too carefully about what a demonstration drive would be, but imagined a nice cruise around with maybe some autumn leaves swirling around our tires or something…

The salesman asked me to put my seatbelt on, which I thought was very sweet, as seatbelts are not commonly worn (or available) here. Little did I know that was just to prevent me from being flung out the window as he demonstrated every possible safety feature except for the air bags.

It was all very impressive though, so sealed our decision of which car to buy.