Last night was pretty cool...I caught the ferry over at 6.00pm to the city and met up with another Australian (Peter) who's been here for three years and has now bought an apartment here in Yichang and married a Chinese girl(Coco). We went out for dinner in a really cool little restaurant in Erma Lu and then kicked on down to "The Dragon Bar"(which is recently owned and run by a couple from my home city... Perth) and met up with some of the other Aussies an Irish man and an American :-)
It's really interesting because aside from the large amount of Indians who study at the university...I think that there really is only a couple of handfuls of foreigners here....It's quite amazing!
Peter teaches at the school where Swallow now is ...she gave him my phone number and he gave me a call. I have to say ...I was so shocked when I answered my phone and heard an Australian voice saying hello...:-)
Anyway so I sat in the bar with the other expats and enjoyed speaking Australian freely and easily for a few hours. As most of my friends and family know...unlike most Australians..I don't drink...so armed with a can of Coca-Cola, I listened and enjoyed the company for a while. I knew that the last bus back to my district was supposed to be around 11.00 but I was interested to see if this was going to happen or if I would be forking out for a Taxi. I walked back to Yiling Square just in time to catch the 27 :-), feeling quite pleased with myself that I'd managed a night on the town, I was unaware of the problem that lay ahead. It seems (unbeknown to me) that the gate into our apartment building gets locked...so at 11.30 I was standing on the street wondering how to get in...I walked the perimeter looking for a way over the wall so as not to have to disturb anyone...but...not possible. I went back to the gate and looked up...I noticed that my neighbour Vivien's light was still on, so embarrassingly gave her a call. She came down to wake up the lady who works the gate and at the same time some men rocked up who had a key...so it all ended o.k.
I am going to ask my friends about this though, because even though I'm not one for going out to bars and late nights (as my friends will vouch :-) It would be nice to know that I could hang out at those Friday night get togethers that they have if I so wish. Sometimes it's just nice to hear an Australian accent :-)
1 comment:
That used to happen to me and Katie sometimes. We asked them several times if we could just have a key to get in since we tended to stay in the city late when we were with friends. But, they wouldn't give us a key. So the only option was to wake up the gate keeper. We always felt embarrassed, but the other people in the building tended to take the attitude "well, that's the gatekeepers' job". Once, at our friend's house, when the gate was locked we just climbed over. You can always try that :)
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