Black Smoke, Burning Garbage

Saturday, August 30. This morning, I'm sitting at my desk with the curtains in the study partially open. (One nice thing about my apartment is that it faces west so I can open curtains in the morning then close them in the afternoon when (if) the sun shines in. Tiff and David's apartment faces east, and the morning sun shines in their bedroom very early, waking them up.)

All of a sudden, I notice something blowing past the sliding glass doors. I look up and realize that it is black smoke. I vaguely remember something that Sabrina (teacher here last year) said about burning garbage once a month so maybe this is what is happening. Then so much black smoke rolls past the windows that the light from outside is completely obscured momentarily. This happens a couple of times. Tiff and David come over because they think perhaps the building is on fire. Despite the fact that I have every single window closed tight, the smell (and even some smoke) seeps in. It's horrible. I can't believe that they do this. Don't they understand how much pollution this creates? In the US, we can't even burn leaves anymore, never mind garbage. Well, I guess this avoids the problem of having landfills take over the earth. In the meantime, I'm trying not to breathe.

At about 10:30 a.m. we bike down to the square to have more passport photos taken and to buy some big paper to write rules on for classroom. It is so much more fun to do this by bike rather than on foot. At the stationary store, I find a notebook that says, in three lines, on the cover "PARIS/ DREAM TO PARIS/ A shoot of light lead me back to Paris in my dream." In much smaller print below the poem continues: A shoot of light lead me back to Paris in my dream. The coffee by the Seine side sent out familiar fragrance. The quartz lamps sparkled bright gorgeously. But there is only my figure under the Eiffel Tower. About the sweet past, There were postmarks only." So of course I had to buy it!

We continue down to the bike shop to get David's (rather Nick's) bike repaired as both wheels are wobbling. We have to leave the bike so we walk across the street to China Construction Bank (tied in with Bank of America so I can withdraw $$ from my account at home!). Then I decide to take the bus to Carrefour to get the "mattress topper" for my bed so David and Tiffany can bike home together (David using my bike).

At Carrefour, I do some grocery shopping, get the mattress pad and schlep everything up and out of the store to find a taxi. Once I'm at the school gate, I realize I can't carry everything up to my apartment at one time, so I leave the bag with groceries with the guard at the gatehouse and carry the mattress upstairs. Then come back to get groceries.

Afternoon spent making bed with new sheets and mattress topper, rearranging some furniture, dust mopping bedroom, study and living area, dusting furniture, mopping kitchen and bathroom floors. Mopping the kitchen floor is kind of discouraging because it doesn't look much different after mopping than it did before. But what the heck. Now it's 5 p.m. and I need to think about lesson plan for Monday.

Later: Ashley, Kelly and Suzanne stop by with Suzanne's new puppy! He is so cute. Tiff and David come over and we visit for awhile. Then as everyone is leaving, JuJu arrives! I'm so happy to see her. Her husband left today (he's getting a graduate degree and spends the school year in Beijing - he has completed one year and has two more to go). She apparently has told the principal that she wants to be our volunteer helper, which is fantastic! She can teach us to cook Chinese food and help us with so many things. And we can speak English with her. It turns out that she's teaching Junior 2s just like me! So that's great.