Ok I've had some snoozing, some dinner, chatted to my sweetheart so time to fill in the blanks, go grab a coffee, it's probably going to be a rambling post as usual
Thursday afternoon I met up with Yamaha and collected the nice jade pendant and bracelet we had chosen yesterday. All that went as plan surprisingly and I had time to go back to the hotel and and freshen up.
I didnt bother bringing my bag or camera as I though I would just be picking Sunny up and bring her back to the hotel
but as usual things didnt quite work out that way!!
Yamaha lives in the same area as Sunny and had invited us over to her apartment for dinner. Sunny told me that Yamaha cannot cook and this means she will cook
So we went to the vegetable market and damn what a place. i soooo wish I brought my camera, apart from the hundreds of veggie and fruit stalls there were animals where fish swam in tanks, tortoises walked around, snakes slithered and more.. When fresh in China..they really mean fresh, the sights and sounds were quite an assault on my laowai senses but it was overall vibrant with a palpable buzz about the place. I just loved how Sunny examined each and every vegetable and for reasons unknown to me would mutter "bu hao" about one vegetable or and another and reject it with a look of disgust on her face. Its interesting to see how she interacts with stall keepers, she holds herself well and has poise and its clear they treat her with respect, to my eyes they fall over themselves trying to help her, maybe they do that for everyone though. In the west more often its an affront to offer anything approaching customer service like here.
Yamaha's kitchen was tiny and the bowls to wash the vegetables where in the same room as a squatter toilet beside the kitchen..open door.......when in Rome...
Very basic ingredients there but Sunny worked her magic and we had a lovely dinner. I had asked could i help with anything while they prepared the food and they joked i could wash up after to much laughter.
So after the meal much to their surprise I did indeed wash the dishes..Of course there is a "right way" to do this and the hen pecked me into doing it the right way which involved various rinsing operations...i suppose with the heat Guangzhou normally has they have to be really careful about stuff like that..squatter toilets on-suite in the kitchen notwithstanding!
After that the girls chatted abut me mostly from what I gathered and I watched Ms Hong Kong on the TV which wasn't the worst thing a man can do to pass the time
Yamaha's parents turned up and Sunny and I made our excuses and left them to visit their daughter after introducing them to me.
Sunny and I then went back to her apartment and she packed some clothes and I chatted to her flatmates. Their friend which I met last week who was going to Boston on some cultural exchange programme had arrived and apparently was full of wondrous tales and they were keen to pump me for information to see if she was telling the truth...how could a modern city have clear skies and no pollution visible?..such a thing didn't seem creditable!
It was nice seeing them again they are lovely ladies. Once Sunny was done packing we headed back to the hotel and had a nice evening snuggling and enjoying being together.
Friday..we just stayed in the hotel room..well she did, I popped out for supplies in the shops below for a few minutes then back to the hotel. That was nice.
Saturday Yamaha called Sunny to say that she had gotten some kind of deal with a photography studio that does the marriage shots and would we be interested ( I had casually mentioned to Yamaha that I wanted to get a nice picture of Sunny and me framed but as it turned out we couldn't find a place to do it at short notice..so of course Yamaha had to fix it by making it even better!) . Sunny was thrilled she always wanted to do this, what girl doesnt want to be done up pretty , try on some fancy clothes and have her picture taken??!! So we went to the studio and the deal (which Yamaha had somehow arranged for a ridiculous price of 8RMB...(not a mistype) was for two outfit changes with Sunny having the full works with make-up eyelashes and hair done. i got to try one one western style suit and one Chinese one. Sunny got a lovely white wedding dress and a tradition Chinese one. Omg!, she looked utterly stunning with her hair and make-up done professionally, I honestly felt like the fat ugly guy beside a professional model.
We had two photo shoots, one with the western gear and one with the Chinese gear and they gave her the pictures on cd afterwards and she will get one large picture framed plus prints of 8 others we choose as out favourites in 15 days.
My netbook doesnt have a cd rom drive so she will qq me them when i get back home. 3 things I have learned from this for our real wedding pics 1) Use teeth whitener or close mouth when smiling 2) Loose weight 3) Get make-up done as well, my skin looks really pink and blotchy beside brown Asian skin tones
I'll post a couple of the pictures when Sunny send to them to me, after wards she wanted to keep her make-up ones she looked so good so we went to a park and took some pics in the rapidly fading light, Sunny kept saying "its not me!!" when she saw her pictures. I think she looks beautiful with or without the make-up and hair done, and told her so and then teased her about this hot supermodel date I had recently :icon_twisted:
She was really happy so of course so was I, girls universally like to look beautiful of course and she certainly was even more beautiful, i felt quite the lucky guy as she fawned over me in the metro, I love the way she keep close attention to me.
We got some dinner in TeeMall and they brought me a knife and fork and for some reason this being my last night this choked me up, the restaurant was a bad choice too as it was mostly a western flavour. I was in China and I wanted to eat with chopsticks and eat proper Chinese food for my last dinner out.. She noticed i was upset and in no time at all I had chopsticks. I definitely think i behave a little irrationally at time like this when I'm barely keeping it together thinking of the flight home.
We went back to the hotel and just basically held each-other close, I lost it a couple of times a little but not in any big way..my nose needed blowing a lot!
Morning came, Sunny helped me pack by really carefully folding all my shirts and even underpants, she wanted to make sure everything was just right for me.
I gave her my yellow backpack i used here to "look after", a t-shirt of mine she liked to wear in bed and she took whatever fruit and juices left in the fridge to bring back to her flatmates
She also took my coffepress to keep safe for me until my next visit back.
Once checked out we got a taxi to the bus station that drives to the Airport and as we were pretty early once I checked my bags in we spent an hour or so just hugging and kissing in the departure area (domestic flight so she could sit there with me). Then the dreaded moment arrived..the moment had to go to the boarding area....
She stood in line with me until I handed in my passport and went though the xray scanner machine.Of course I was in pretty bad shape and they people there obviously had seen this before and treated me with kindness and for that I was grateful. Suny stood there watching until I finally had to go out of sight, I eventually got my act together and the flight to Beijing was uneventful.
Once I arrived in Beijing I called Sunny and she told me she had lost it as soon as I went out of sight which choked me a little but I did my best to keep her spirits up.
Then I got a shock..the international departure notice board was not listing my flight..WTF!
I thought I must have gone to the wrong place and eventually found someone that spoke English and they told me my flight was cancelled. And I had to go to the KLM desk to get another flight. Not good, I'm supposed to be in work tomorrow morning at 7AM..
The KLM desk told me they had subcontracted this flight to China Sourthern who had then cancelled the flight. I said I don't care who did what, put me on first class or whatever but i need to be back in Dublin today! She told me this is not possible, which frankly i think is a barefaced lie. Anyhow, the upshot of it all is that they wnt fly me out until tomorrow 11:55 which meants I wont be able to go into work and i have no vacation left so my boss will non to impressed but what can I do, I'm in Beijing..there just is no way I can get there ..
So i demanded a hotel room for the night (they didnt offer one) and they eventually said ok. So they bought me to a hotel that close to the airport but is right beside the motorway..there literally is no shops nbear here at all. But the hotel has a restaurant and they said dinner was free as would be breakfast.
I got a taxi to the nearest super market and bought supplies and had a couple of beers and a snooze then had dinner. It was actually really tasty and really Chinese (in other words hard to describe , tasty and nicely spicy) and I got to use chopsticks again so my mood improved immensely.
I called Sunny and had a nice chat with her. She wanted to know exactly what time I need to get up to get my flight home and then declared that she would give me a wake up call herself to make sure I don't miss my flight
:heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart:
So I'm having a few nice glasses of Great Wall red wine, with some Pringles style crisps and Chinese biscuits Sunny and I ate before and I had to buy to get one last familiar taste that reminds me of her.
Am counting the days, hours, minutes and seconds until i go back to Guangzhou to meet my love.
