Day 11: May 3rd - Locked Out

The wakeup call and train ride back to Wuxi was all fine, and it turned out we had soft seats (like a higher class ticket, with more comfortable train cars). Getting back to Wuxi, we actually got here early, and Jessica led us to McDonalds, because she wanted a real breakfast. Chinese breakfasts suck. Since they like to cook with a lot of oil, and bread a lot of stuff, it's often very heavy, and/or tastes like shit. Once Jessica was satiated, and I finished my coffee, we split up. Since I was so engrossed in my Palahniuk book, I volunteered to go sit by the apartment and wait for the landlady. She and Alex went off to Hylite to see if they could get Internet. I don't think they ever did, but they were gone for about 2 or 3 hours. Also, no landlady showed up. We did discover we had new neighbours, however, and they let us sit in their apartment and they interpreted (or spoke for us, rather) over the phone, since even Jessica's Chinese is broken, at best.

Finally, the landlady and her son showed up, and said we had TWO keys. This was flat out wrong, so we insisted we only had one key, and her son called the locksmith. The locksmith had the door open in under 2 minutes, which was relieving. The landlord was busy paying attention to the new neighbours and nagging them, so the son paid the locksmith (it was either 20 or 70 yuan, we couldn't tell) before she noticed. When she realized he paid, despite my not knowing Chinese, the context was clear. It went something like this:

Landlady: "Did you pay for it?!"
Son: "Yes."
Landlady: "Why would you do that?! The stupid foreigners should have to pay!"
Son: "Shush, mother."

It's clear she hates us, and her body language tells me everything, but the son is reasonable, and I prefer him, despite his lack of handy-man-ness. She is constantly clucking on about something, and stresses everyone out. Anyway, he eventually took our key, and had a bunch of copies made. Now each of us have a key, and we'll be giving another copy to the school (Hylite).

We cleaned up the apartment, again. This place accumulates dust so fucking fast, I can't believe it. Alex and I went out for lunch, Jessica still being full from her McD's breakfast. We found an Internet Cafe, and ate at a Muslim restaurant. It's back to quiet Wuxi life, and I'm thankful for it, since Shanghai was both expensive, and somewhat stressful. It's too bad we can't bring the Shanghai night life here though, that was a lot of fun.