TUESDAY, 4/7/15

Judy heads out, ready to fight the taxi wars. I feel sorry for the next person that jumps in front of her and gets her taxi. They may not understand what she’s saying, but they’ll know she’s mad. Her patience is wearing very thin. There’s no official line, so more times than not, people walk up the street in front of her and flag the taxis before they get to her. She’s not a happy person when that happens.

I go through my usual morning routine. When our ayi arrives, I grab the bike and ride over to the table tennis park. I’ve got a few things to practice before my next lesson. One of the older guys grabs me when I walk in, and we hit for the next two hours. I can’t knock anything past him. As I begin to hit harder, he hits harder. He’s helping me work on my game, but eventually he decides to remind me he’s a real player, and raises his level, running me around. Then he slows down and goes back to helping.

Back home, I put together a soup for dinner. The apartment’s clean, dinner’s ready, and I’m beat from swimming, the bike, and the table tennis. I’m gonna sleep hard tonight.

WEDNESDAY, 4/8/15

Our ayi arrived later than usual today. She didn’t come in until 8:30am. She’d been walking in around 7:45 the last several weeks. I killed a little time and then head out to Metro for the weekly grocery excursion. I got back around 10:30, unloaded the groceries, and went over for a swim session. I’m up to 1400 meters. When I got back to the apartment after swimming our ayi was gone, and I ate lunch.   I worked a while on some travel possibilities, and then took a short nap (one of the perks of part-time employment). I spent the rest of the afternoon making sure everything was ready for my classes tomorrow and Friday.

I left the apartment at 5:00 to ride the train over to Liangmaqiao Station. I met three of the faculty from my school for dinner. They’ve been trying a different style of food each Wednesday. Two weeks ago, it was Indian, and this week, it’s German. We have dinner at The Paulaner   I had some sausages, and potato salad. It was ok, but not remarkable. Afterwards, everyone wanted to walk to the nearby South German Bakery for bread to take home. I walked with them, but didn’t get bread. There’s no way I’m going to drop any pounds eating a couple of loaves of German bread with butter.