aadler | Ireland/China 2025, continuing (15)

Fifth day in China – June 25 Wednesday

Up about 6:30AM for breakfast. Morning walk around 7:45, then after I’d rested Susan tried for a walk of her own, pushing the wheelchair as a stroller. She was able to manage six minutes before her knees rebelled, and we returned to the apartment.

(Later she did sitting knee exercises, to maintain the 20 minutes of activity that was recommended to support the regenerative knee injections she was given about a month ago.)

Overall relaxation through the rest of the morning and the afternoon. About 6:20PM the two of us started over to the Yins’, arriving something like 6:35. On our entry, we were immediately shown the powered wheelchair that had been ordered a few days ago. Logan was enthusiastic about showing us all the features and how to make them work, Amber less voluble in translating what he was saying. (In fairness, most of that was fairly clear from his demonstrations.)

Then the meal, fine as usual; not top-notch restaurant quality, but solid, reliable food in good variety. Kevin arrived after we were finished, and had a quick meal of his own. At Susan’s inquiry, he had Mei-li contact the management of our apartment; they told her maid service was only once a week, that being one of the conditions of the reduced price that had been made available for us, but since they hadn’t told her that while she was making the negotiations, she had it raised to twice a week.

Kevin walked us back, Susan using her new powered chair and me pushing the regular wheelchair (folded) off beside her. Back at the apartment, Kevin showed me the right controls to use to do a load of laundry in the apartment’s washing machine — it was a push-button control model, and I couldn’t read the script on the buttons — and also walked through getting Susan’s laptop wirelessly linked to the apartment TV so she could watch her DVDs on a larger screen.

Susan went to bed before 10:30PM, tired enough that she left her DVD movie unfinished. I waited till the washing machine was done, hung the clothes out on the balcony to air-dry. I was ready to go to bed myself by 11:00, but I posted to WeChat a list of things we needed to get for Susan tomorrow, and that started a bunch of back-and-forth messages. Once that was done, then I was ready for bed.