Second day in shanghai and due to some messed up
arrangements I was to be staying a second night with my Contact and travel to
my new city the next day. He left me napping in the afternoon and came back
with a late breakfast of tofu soup and some delicious little flatbread things
with a savoury paste in them. Yummy. It was then a case of killing time until
lunch
I sent my mum and friends more emails on my phone while my
host made endless calls to au pairs and families trying to make arrangements. I
overheard plenty that was a bit worrying, a boy had had an epileptic fit, a
condition he hadn’t disclosed and was now stuck with no money for a ticket home
and a family that refused to have him. Eesh.
Shanghai was busy and very hot, we walked to a local café
and I got some noodles and some soup.
The soup was just what I needed. I read ‘The Bell Jar’ that day until dinner, when Contact made us a simple dinner and went to bed. Apparently no hotel would take me and I didn’t have the energy to think about how much I didn’t want to share a room with a strange man (who had spent the entire day telling me that my hair was 'too dry' even though I am simply mixed race, and then bitching about his colleagues and the other au pairs)
. About an hour after I fell asleep I woke to the sound of screaming in the room. I rolled over and realized it was coming from my contact, a man in his 30s. He was screaming, crying and shaking a few feet away from me. He yelled a lot of stuff that seemed like begging and for the first time since arranging this I was glad I didn’t speak Chinese….
The soup was just what I needed. I read ‘The Bell Jar’ that day until dinner, when Contact made us a simple dinner and went to bed. Apparently no hotel would take me and I didn’t have the energy to think about how much I didn’t want to share a room with a strange man (who had spent the entire day telling me that my hair was 'too dry' even though I am simply mixed race, and then bitching about his colleagues and the other au pairs)
. About an hour after I fell asleep I woke to the sound of screaming in the room. I rolled over and realized it was coming from my contact, a man in his 30s. He was screaming, crying and shaking a few feet away from me. He yelled a lot of stuff that seemed like begging and for the first time since arranging this I was glad I didn’t speak Chinese….
After the screaming subsided into tired whimpering I rolled
over and tried to sleep, and as I was drifting off I was treated to what Id
been warned about in China because of my …distaste for expulsions of bodily
fluids, especially vomiting or spitting. I heard a man all the way from the
street hock up a massive loogie and heard the messy splat of it hitting the
dusty pavement outside.
I rolled over and gagged into my pillow
I want to go home.
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