Oh My!!!! What a day!!!!

August 24, 2012-

Today is the day that Mark has been waiting for ….years.  He finally gets to go on a long-awaited week-long fishing trip with his Dad to Alaska.  He's been talking about doing a fishing trip like this for several years.  I'm soooo happy for him but in that same breath I'm also extremely jealous.  Childish, I know.  

So….his leaving for the Beijing airport meant getting up at 3:20am to see him off at 4:00am.  Ooof.  Then I went back to sleep after having set my alarm to wake me up than my usual 5:20am wake-up call.  Except- I forgot to turn off my 5:20am alarm!!!!  *sigh*  

Thankfully, Mark arrived at the airport earlier than planned.  You never can tell with traffic here- an accident on the road can cause the cars to come to a complete halt for hours while they sort stuff out.  

At 7:45am the girls were ready to head to school- which isn't even a five-minute walk across the street for us.  Today we had a little incident that fortunately for everyone didn't go as badly as it could have.  While we were crossing the street with a school guard an electric bike/small scooter tried to go around us but instead wound up running smack into Annika.  She fell off her little scooter and was not hurt.  I may have yelled at the man on the scooter (in English which I'm sure sunk in- HA!).  The security guard said nothing to him and the man on the bike left as quickly as he'd come.  No apologies or anything.  The route he chose to "go around us" makes me think he deliberately wanted to hit us- instead of going to the side where we'd come from he went to the side where we were walking towards (does that make sense?  A picture might help.)

Naturally I'm furious.  Livid.  Angry.  

The management office for the community we live in has done absolutely nothing to ensure the safety of the occupants of the houses here.  Our community- or compound- is called Original County (O.C.) or Kang Qiao Hua Yuan (kind of means Cambridge Garden) in Chinese. There are at least fifty expat families living in O.C. and you cannot imagine how much money our companies are spending for us live here.  Thousands of dollars per month to rent a house that is about the size of our house back home (but with a teeny, tiny yard).  You'd think with that price you'd get a mansion- I guess these houses might be considered mansions by Chinese standards but the house I live in isn't all that much bigger than our Wisconsin house. Yes, it is very expensive to live in China but the expats get an extra special "deal" to live here.  Some nasty words come to mind.  I know that many Chinese families and couples struggle to buy a house or an apartment to the staggering cost and red-tape issues.

Anyway….safety is a HUGE concern of ours while living abroad.  I'll admit I don't feel especially safe wandering around and I most certainly would never ever let my girls wander around outside by themselves.  O.C. management has failed us in so many ways and what's worse is that they don't care or see fit to change what they're doing.  Street lamps are broken and the lights don't work (However, they do have cleaning ladies who will clean those broken lamps!!!).  Some of the wooden boardwalks have rotting wood which means if you step in the wrong place on the walk-way you could end up seriously injuring your foot.  They have lots of plants and trees growing all over the place but the grounds are not maintained.  Another American family just discovered the other day that there is what we think is poison sumac growing- and because the grounds haven't been maintained the shrub is growing too big and encroaching on the walk-way.  Several people have complained of getting rashes or painful stinging feeling when they've walked by shrubs.  Management says they can only hire one person to do the maintainence on this huge compound because it's too expensive to hire people….is this really true?????  Somehow I think that's just an excuse….and a bad one at that.  

Oh and last year the management office made a very "wise" decision to close off one of the main gates into the compound- thus forcing all the traffic (including big busses that stop for nothing) to drive on the road we need to cross to get to school.  Before that particular gate was closed all the traffic was diverted through there and there was very little traffic on our road.  

And, they also keep hiring and immediately firing the expat liasons.  So, we finally meet a person we can voice our concerns to and they fire that person the next day.  Why???? Corruption?  Laziness? Don't know. 

I hate being that person that always whines and complains and gets angry but living here is turning me into that person.  

The thing is- I like our house.  I like how close we are to the school.  I like the school.  I like our landlord (he has been very courteous and helpful).  I've spoken with the director of the school and he has also said that the school has also tried speaking to O.C. management and they refuse to do anything about it (meaning creating a safer crossing for students and parents).  

The school and the parents have asked the management team to put speed bumps across the entire width of the road to slow down traffic….you should see how fast some people drive!

I keeping thinking what the people would do back home- and I realize they would not have tried driving around us at all.  They would have STOPPED and waited for us to safely cross (even if that makes the drivers grumbly).

The crossing from our gate to the back gate of the school. OC management said it was doing the expatriots a "favor" by opening this gate for us. Sooooo…..our companies are paying buckets and buckets of money to make sure their employees and their families have safe living quarters. I'm sorry- it's not a favor- it's YOUR JOB to ensure our safety.

Down at the end of this road it comes to a T-section with another road. The gate that used to be open was on that road (if you could turn right on to the T). Of course now all the traffic comes on to this road. I took this photo in the afternoon when there was naturally no traffic. Usually there are busses, cars, vans and scooters buzzing by here. Sometimes at amazing speeds. Sorry. The cones and the security guards just aren't enough to keep people from doing stupid stuff while driving!

Looking the other direction ….. and of course there is no traffic when I come to take a photo of the street.

I just keep thinking- this time it was a little bump….but what will it be next time???? A child could be seriously hurt or killed.  What then?????  Why not do something now to prevent that from happening? Why wait until it's too late???????   

Thank Heavens for friends who swoops in and save the day!!!!  What would I do without you????