China 2011: Day 24-27

There is so much that happens in a day that it's hard to think back to Monday and recap all that has gone on this week. We painted an apartment Monday to get it ready to move desks and offices up to the 3rd floor. I spent the day shopping for fabric, driving an hour each way to go look at the furniture that is being built, coming back to the Mac and meeting with the "curtain lady" for 2 hours and then we finished the day by taking the subway to the acupuncture place where Brad and I both got treatment. My arm is feeling much better. It was a long tiring day and we finally made it home at 11pm. Tuesday Chris and I spent the day painting our apartment while the boys moved all the desks, office equipment and a huge safe up 3 flights. Wed. was painting another apartment and the great room. We are getting the bulk of the painting done however, the buying of the paint is still a problem. We once again went to the paint store to buy "golden needles" and now I have 3 versions of the same color and they aren't even close to the fandex. It took an hour this time to try and tell them that I wanted the color changed and the paint man tried to tell me that if I painted it on the wall it would miraculously turn into the right color! Oh, getting things done here is sooo hard.

Today I hit the wall. I think I'm physically and mentally worn out and my trip to Ikea today was the straw that broke the camels back. I left at noon and it took only 40 minutes to get there. It was 'not far', actually pretty short by Beijing standards. I had to buy curtain rods and a few other things. I thought I'd grab some lunch but there were just too many people in line. It took forever to check out, then find the van driver and then we sat in a traffic jam in the Ikea parking ramp for 50 minutes! THEN, we got into traffic which is horrific because Friday is the start of the big holiday that lasts a week and EVERYONE either leaves or comes into Beijing. It took almost 2 hours to get home. But then Bob, Chris and Brad met me at the gate to help carry stuff in and we went out for a nice dinner and they cheered me up and life is good once again. Actually it's really fun here along with the tough times. We do laugh a lot at all the stuff even though it is frustrating. Here are some of our laughs.