Sleepovers

I must have been shattered last night as when I awoke I saw a missed call from Lin Hong, where Leilei and Xixi stayed last night. I called her to find out the problem only to be told it was fine; Xixi had told her that she wanted to go home at 12.45am when I was already asleep. So anyway I went round to pick up the kids around 9.30 but no-one would answer the door. Lin Hong had gone to work so I called her daughter Tian Tian and after a few minutes she came bleary-eyed to let me in. In her room I found Leilei and Xixi and another girl lying on Tian Tian's (double) bed, another girl sleeping on the floor, and yet another sleeping on the window sill. It looked like the remains of a pre-pubescent orgy, but my kids stirred as I called their names, still fully-clothed, and I took them home to be re-clothed, fed and taken to school for around 10.30. I spoke to the teacher about paying her for the kids but she just told me "bu yao jin" - don't worry. She was happy that Leilei was finally starting to do some reading with the other kids. Mostly they read extracts from Confuscious. I'm going to have to do so myself so I understand what they are being taught. When I left Leilei told me not to come to pick him up later...hmm

It's my last day before work again. Normally I would say that the two weeks have flown by but because of the amount of time doing stuff it actually feels like longer...that trip from the airport a far memory and a grain of sand in the beach that is Pingguo and its inhabitants.

I noticed a rather beautiful car outside our local supermarket. It looked like a Porsche but had four doors...another fake or lookalike? No, indeed it was a Porsche Panamera - I'd seen one similar at Nanning airport so now know what that was too. There is a lot of money here as these cars range from 60-120k quid in the UK so here you are looking at double that after all the import taxes etc.

While I was admiring the car I got a call from A Da. Well it was Leilei using A Da's phone to call me to tell me not to pick him up after school again! I smelled a rat but I think it was simply that he wanted to go to Nong Kaicheng's house again. Not that it made much difference to me as I still had to go and pick up Xixi. I didn't see Leilei for the rest of the day as he stayed and slept at Nong Kaicheng's house. I dropped Xixi off at Waipo's then went to see Yang Haiwei, who had invited me for a meal with some bosses. Deja vu. But yeah why not? I might not be able to do that so much when working and in meetings. We had a nice meal and the three gentlemen from the bank (maybe they were managers rather than bosses) got rather tipsy after a few glasses of Li Quan 3.1% beer, and that broke down barriers with a couple of teacher women who were there, as they started gan bei'ing with them at a faster rate. I went to get Xixi and brought her back for a bit, but by the time I was back they were all red-faced from the beer and had started playing "mo pai", a gambling card game, and it was getting smokey. So after a short while, during which the women did their usual cooing over Xixi, we made our excuses and left to go back to Waipo and Jiuma. At Waipo's, Xixi said she wanted to stay there. But when I left she wanted to go with me...so shoes on again and walk home for 5 minutes before she decided she wanted to go back with Waipo and Jiuma. And as soon as we were back she wouldn't let me go so she went back with me again...