Twelfth day in China [October 12]

[aadler]

I woke up around 7:30 AM, Susan maybe an hour later. We’d already arranged to have the morning to ourselves, and she wanted to try to get in some exercise of her own, so just after 9:00 we went downstairs together and set out to walk around the Bao’an Stadium, right across the street.

It should have been ridiculously simple: just keep the stadium on your left, turn whenever you’re about to start walking away from it. Something went wrong, though; trees got between us and the structure, then buildings, we kept going because surely we’d be able to spot it again in a few minutes … I could have managed on my own, but by the time we determined that we’d gone way off track at some point, Susan was too tired to keep on going. We tried to spot some street signs or landmarks we could cite, called Kevin to explain our problem; his advice was to hail a cab (whereupon he would tell the driver where to take us), but we were in a place that didn’t seem conducive to cab traffic and Susan was disinclined to move to a different spot. Then she spotted a small … sort of golf-cart-type vehicle with a rotating light on the top — she thought it was police, but the two men in it wore civilian clothes so I’m thinking municipal workers of some time — and went to hail them, passing over the phone so Kevin could explain our situation and give them the address to which we were trying to return.

I had thought they would, once they understood, give directions to Kevin whereupon he would translate them for us; instead, once they understood, they motioned for us to get in the cart, and we thanked them profusely and held on to be delivered like the helpless tourists we hadn’t wanted to be. They may have just chosen a route that would allow them to avoid traffic and go quickest, but it really felt like it took them ten minutes to get us back to the Bao’an Stadium area (at one point I was afraid they were taking us to the airport). We thanked them again, called Kevin to let him know we’d been safely ferried to familiar territory, and then proceeded on our way.

By now we were right across the street from Walmart again, so we went there to pick up some small supplies (and look for others; Susan brought plenty of tops, but the weather is warm enough that she prefers capri pants to regular slacks, and only has one pair; however, this particular Walmart had already put out its winter clothes, so there wasn’t much to choose from). Done with our purchases, we stopped in at KFC for a late breakfast/early lunch — it was around 10:30 by now — and returned to the apartment once we’d eaten.

The original plan had been that the Yins would pick us up around 2:00 PM, but after she had rested for awhile Susan felt she’d rather stay in for the rest of the day; she was having some dizziness whenever she turned her head a certain way, and wanted time to recover.

We did this and that through the later afternoon. At 5:00 PM I went to Walmart again to replenish our cola supplies, then stopped at the Pizza Hut just down from KFC (I’d been thinking of another visit to Kung Fu, but Susan had mentioned Pizza Hut as if that was what she wanted) to get to-go dinner for us. Kevin called while I was waiting there, to make sure everything was okay, but that was as far as it went. Back up to the apartment, had our meal, and settled in for the evening.

Mei-li called us around 9:00 PM, and we made our plans for tomorrow. Susan went to bed a few minutes later. I kept going till 10:00, then to bed myself.

Next day