Welcome Home?

Back in Guyuan and they didn't really make it easy for us to be back, seriously. They locked our front gate for us and neglected to leave a key or unlock it for us so we could get in when we rolled into to town at 12:30AM. We did know that they were going to have a lock of some sort on our gate before we left, but we thought that they would make sure that we would be able to get in. Initially we told our waiban just for another padlock, but, noooo! She had to send someone over to look at the lock and replace it. Which he was not able to do. Matt just wanted a length of chain so we could use the lock we had. But, NOOOOOOO! We were told that we could wake the headmaster for the key. But, knock, knock, no one answered. Once again, just short of being helpful.

So, we had to go and get a hotel room here for the night. We went to Hong Bao (were we eat many meals. They hooked us up with a really nice and cheap room. In the morning we took full advantage of the nice, clean, new bathroom facilities. Then, we walked back to our apartment and went to get the key from the headmaster. We finally got into our courtyard only to find that they also changed the lock on our front door and did not let us know 1. That they changed that lock too 2. Why they changed the lock and 3. What they were doing inside our apartment while we were gone. We try both keys without luck.

I go back to the headmaster's house and call our waiban. She doesn't understand why we can't unlock our door and assumes that we (errr Matt) just don't know how to use a key correctly (that all of this is due to our incompetence - high tech those keys are) and sends someone over. The guy who eventually comes also cannot open the door with our key so he whips out his own key (what is he doing with a key?) and opens our door.

Finally we are in our apartment. We go into the bathroom only to find that our toilet has no water pressure and will not flush. We have to call our waiban again. 3 hours later we can finally go to the bathroom. Our waiban calls later and tells us that they had to "do something with the water" when we were gone, so what, they broke into our apartment, tinkered around so our toilet wouldn't work, replaced the lock on our door so we can't get in and then padlock the whole thing shut? She didn't even notify us about the front door or even mention it to us when we initially called and emailed - she just mentioned that maybe Matt wasn't using the key correctly. What kind of retard to you need to be to not be able to figure out how a key works? Especially since the six months leading up to this hadn't been a particular problem with that particular technology and/or skill. Jesus. She said that our neighbor heard our water. Yeah, right, they "heard" our water. Unless it was pouring out, there is no way they would be able to "hear" our water. I bet they just busted in to plant more bugs and look at our stuff. Once again, lying to us and just short of being helpful.

Anyhow, we don't have our class schedule yet or the new books for the coming term. So, we can't make a lesson plan or anything. They may or may not have a meeting on Monday for all of the teachers. So, school will start on Tuesday? Maybe? Nice job with the planning China!

Geez! Welcome back, right?