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It’s very much autumn now.

Sunny afternoons and clear skies have made for perfect sitting-by-the-lake weather, and the park keepers have been kept very busy sweeping all the falling leaves.

Lucky Chandler is away, as the sight of a broom made of twigs is just too tempting, and he tends to pee on the sweeper’s brooms if they ever dare to stop for a rest.

Today as we lay in the sun, the sound of someone playing an erhu came floating across from the island. I begged for Patrick to take me over to see, but he said it was “just a normal thing”, so weird for me to want to go and stare.

By the time I had convinced him that it was ok for me to stare as I am a foreigner, and we do strange things, our erhu uncle had moved on to playing Chinese chess instead.

I think I’ll just have hurry over and stare by myself next time.

Chandler and I don’t lead the most exciting life at the moment, but it is quite relaxing.

We are making lots of new friends by the lake however, when we go on our fish-watching expeditions, as it seems to be the meeting point for the local elderly population.

Directly downstairs from our apartment is a small area of exercise equipment and a seating arrangement under the trees.  Generally, all the grandmas exercise and play with their grandchildren while the grandpas sit in their singlets under the trees and smoke.

Chandler and I cause quite a stir each time we pass by.

At first I had a little trouble answering all the questions asked about myself and my monster-sized dog, as I had until this point managed to avoid speaking Chinese at all, and had no idea how to say things like “dog biscuits” in Chinese.  Eventually, after lots of yes/no answer questions, I managed to pass on enough information to get the gossips started.

Now when Chandler and I go out for a walk we can hear all the information that has been gathered about us being passed around.

“She is Australian”, “Her husband is from Hefei”, “They live on the 11th floor”, “The dog doesn’t eat sandwiches”…

It’s a nice community atmosphere here, people spend so much time outdoors talking to whoever else is out and about.

I must learn some more dog related vocabulary and get to know my neighbours better.

The weather is perfect in Hefei now.

We have finally moved into our new apartment, so now Chandler and I are lazily listening to our new CDs and enjoying the warm breeze flowing through all the windows. Lucky us!

We have discovered that there are lots of fish in the lake downstairs, so spent an hour this afternoon watching them. They definitely aren’t as pretty as the Koi Patrick and I regularly saw in Tokyo, but are just as fun to watch. The small fish swim under the overhanging trees and nibble on anything that falls from the branches, while the bigger fish leap about further out making surprisingly large splashes.

I have still not taken any photos inside as builders are still hanging about making a mess, but I will do so soon!

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.