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I’ve been home a week now and love Melbourne more than ever before.

I don’t want to leave.

I haven’t been many places, but I’m pretty sure Melbourne is the best place to live in the WHOLE WORLD.

It’s been a quiet first week home, as I try to revert back to normal sleeping patterns and get used to the fact that I am here, the sky really can look that blue, and I’ve a whole fridgeful of baby bocconcini.

I’m going back to Melbourne this week.

I’m so looking forward to leading a bit of a normal life for a while and working out what it is I want to do.

Daily life in Hefei is just too bizarre, not at all possible to make rational decisions while here I have decided.

Yesterday the intercom rang and I ignored it, as I usually do if I don’t recognise the person.  Just a few minutes later my visitor was back with a guard, ringing again.  I like and trust our lovely guards so answered just in case he had something important to tell me.  The conversation went something along the lines of:

Hello?

Is anybody home?

Umm… no, there’s nobody home.

Ok (hangs up).

I’ve no idea who it was or why he enlisted the guard for help.

Not long after that, a girl from the washing machine company called and fired off a very rapid bunch of questions I didn’t understand a word of. Our washing machine has been “fixed” a number of times recently and each time I have got what I assume is a follow up call from the company to check all is well.

Generally once the caller realises I am clearly not fluent in Chinese, they ask a few simple questions, I give a few simple answers and I am left feeling quite impressed with my ability to hold a phone conversation in Chinese.

After a few attempts at answering”Washing machine, good” to each of yesterday’s long incomprehensible questions and not succeeding in making my caller go away, I decided instead to reply to each question with long English phrases.  Strangely enough, she wasn’t put off and we had quite a long conversation about who-knows-what.

I’m shit at being a housewife.

I’m glad to have finally worked that out I guess.

It was always nice to think up all the things I would do with all that free time, to get back to doing all the things I always wanted to do but never got around to.

Now I find all these things are far more interesting to dream about than to do. And I’m bored.

Interior design, painting, photography… I still want to surround myself with beautiful things, but the thought of filling my time with such meaningless prettiness and nothing else is turning out to be more than I can bear.

I will always wish I could cook well, paint well, write well, take amazing photographs, and hope I’ll still learn how… but it’s not enough.

Patrick has set a vague timeline that we will stay in China for about 2 years. I’m really not sure I’ll manage that.

I was looking up the masters I want to do again this evening, it’s miles past the deadline for applications but I might be able to weasel my way in if I’m lucky.

Patrick plans to be in China for 2 years, the masters is 2 years… it seems well timed.

Pity it’s in Melbourne.

Would it be weird for us to live in different countries for this long? Patrick wants to go back to Melbourne for a few months during the Chinese summer, and maybe I would get that long uni holiday at the end of the year to come back to Hefei…

Maybe I wouldn’t get in on such late notice anyway.

I checked my Chinese horoscope for answers, as that seemed as good a place as any to look at 1 in the morning on a Sunday.

I found a description of my personality that was scarily accurate:

Thank goodness for open spaces, because the Horse needs plenty of room to roam! Energetic, good with money and very fond of travel, Horses are the nomads of the Chinese Zodiac, roaming from one place or project to the next. All of this Sign’s incessant activity and searching may be to satisfy a deep-rooted desire to fit in. Paradoxically, Horses feel a simultaneous yearning for independence and freedom.

An impatient streak can lead Horses to be less than sensitive to others’ needs. These colts would rather take a situation firmly in hand as opposed to waiting for others to weigh in or come to terms with it. The lone wolf inside the Horse can at times push others away, but this also makes this Sign stronger and is a key to its success. Horses are self-reliant and, though they might lose interest fast in a tedious, nine-to-five day job, are willing to do the work necessary to get ahead.

Horses tend not to look much at the big picture; instead they just follow their whims, which can result in a trail of prematurely ended relationships, jobs, projects and so on. This Sign really knows how to motivate others, though, and get a lot accomplished.

Once they find some peace within themselves, they can curb their wandering tendencies and learn to appreciate what’s in their own backyard.

All seems quite accurate, apart from the whole “impatient” thing. Oh, wait…

Anyway, I guess I need to find some peace within myself then… I think it is telling me to just stay here

Check your own horoscope if you dare: http://chinese.astrology.com/

I have had terribly bad luck with machines this week.

At the start of the week I turned on the exhaust fan above the stove only to have it make such a horrible rattle I had to turn it off again immediately.

The washing machine stopped functioning properly two days ago, which is very distressing. It is especially annoying as I have only one pair of trousers that fits me now, and they take bloody ages to dry. I’ll only be able to leave the house every second day now, or possibly just go along with local custom and head out in my pyjamas every now and then.

Yesterday I was clever enough to leave a candle on top of the oven when I was waiting for it to heat up, so wax dripped down inside and caused clouds of scary smoke to start appearing from the air vents.

Finally, this evening I plugged in my hair drier in and started to dry my hair, only to remember as sparks started leaping out at me that I brought it with me from Japan, so probably should have used an adaptor…

Now the kitchen smells of melted wax, the laundry smells of damp wool and everywhere I go I am followed by a small cloud of slightly burnt hair smell.

I probably shouldn’t touch my laptop again for a while…

The weather has been perfect this week, sunny blue skies and cool.

It has meant I have got a lot of cleaning done, as it it much more fun to clean when it is sunny, and I have spent lots of time sitting on the grass by the lake with Chandler, but… that’s about the extent of what I have been doing.

I’m getting bored.

I have lots of things to do, but just don’t feel like doing any of them. Instead of doing my Save the Children work or my interior design assignments, I am sitting on the net looking up other possible pass times.

Very bad.

Patrick works far too much, so now I miss having him around all the time.

One very good turn of events this week though, Patrick made an important discovery.

We can buy bread from the hotel!  Yay!! They have rye and walnut bread, croissants and all sorts of other tasty things.  I bought myself a loaf of banana bread this week and it was my best purchase in years.  Well, close to it.

At least on the food front, things are getting better and better.