Today is the day that my visa expires so at 8.30am I went to the visa office to extend it. Now I am a little anxious that by leaving it until the day my visa expires, there may be a fine or I might get into trouble for overstaying my visa. I did voice these concerns but I was told that the office staff were too busy to take me any sooner. I was back at the school by 10.30am and had more report cards to proof read and a few lessons as well.
After school I had to wait at my apartment for a maintenance person to come and fix my toilet (apparently it is leaking through the ceiling of my downstairs neighbours) then I had arranged to go swimming with my friend Amanda.
First we had to decide which swimming pool to go to as there are two nearby. The pool closer to Amanda is supposedly cheaper but is crawling with children. The pool closer to me is at the “Airport Hotel” basement and is known for being an all around better experience, although both are within a five minute walk.
We went to the Airport Hotel pool because of the good reviews. It ended up being £4 per person which seems quite expensive for China. We also had to give them a £2 deposit for the locker key per person. This was all spoken in Chinese and we struggled to understand but could sort of figure out the gist of what she wanted but we weren’t quite sure about the deposit. We tried calling our friend to translate, but she couldn’t understand either. We were about to call one of the office staff from school when a girl came out of the locker area and translated for us which was a relief.
We changed and put our things into the lockers, walked through a little foot pool which was freezing and went into the pool area and it was actually an ok pool. In all honesty, I was expecting worse! We set down our towels and went to get into the pool when one of the lifeguards walked towards us with a stern look on his face. He pointed to his head and then to all of the other people in the swimming pool and we realised that we needed to wear swimming caps! I had to get out of the cold pool and walk all the way back to the reception to go and buy a swimming cap, which they only had hideous designs and looked way to small. As it turned out, mine was better than Amanda’s (she was prepared and had bought one from decathlon, but hers kept falling off).
We had been told by one of the guys at the school that if you want to swim in the deep end you have to get a little card made with your picture on it after passing a swim test. He said that you need to be able to swim 400 meters to swim in the deep end. I don’t know if the part of the pool that we were in just didn’t qualify as the deep end or if they didn’t want to bother after the language barrier and swim cap fiasco, but we didn’t take any swim test. Which is probably a good thing as one of the reasons we were there was so that I could teach Amanda how to swim properly. Amanda did 10 lengths and said that that was the most that she had ever swam before.
We were in the pool (and Amanda in the sauna) for about 40 minutes, then decided that that was enough for our first visit. We made plans to check out the other pool to see if the cheaper price is worth it. We normally eat dinner right after school at about 5 PM. By the time we had put our clothes on and returned the keys it was nearly 7PM and we were really hungry. Luckily the dumpling place we like to eat at sometimes was just next door so we ate there then went our separate ways. I had really wanted to go swimming every morning before school but seeing as the pool doesn't open until 10am that’s not going to happen. I hope I have the energy to go more often after school.
No comments:
Post a Comment