Shanghai on Life

So I’m home with a cough and an unrelenting runny nose. It’s ladies night in Shanghai and I’m at home with a box of kleenex, my comforter, and my blog (no offence blog). My friends are out at a teppanyaki restaurant where it’s all you can eat (amazing) Japanese food and open bar..but I’m here popping antibiotics. Do you feel sorry for me yet?…No? Yeah, didn’t think so and don’t worry, you probably shouldn’t.

Today I almost lit our apartment on fire! It’s finally gotten cold in Shanghai in the last few days and so adventures in heating the apartment have begun! I have a space heater in my room, so I thought I’d break it out as my Chinese tutor was coming over and we study in my bedroom which was pretty frigid at the time.  Soooo flick on the heater, close the door to my room and maybe 20 minutes later my tutor arrived and we went to start our lesson. Opened the door and smoke comes pouring out and I’m sure at that point my room is on fire. Well, there was not fire, but the top of the heater is completely black and melted and everything in the apartment reeks of smoke and burnt plastic…good thing the landlord is coming over tomorrow! Another thing this experience has taught me is that we have no smoke alarms in the apartment. I was in full-fledged ‘close the door, open the windows and start waving the dishcloth around in the air’ routine when I realized there’s not an alarm to be found. I guess there’s a good chance there aren’t any alarms in any of the apartments in our building. My friend Christian claims that German people are not big on smoke alarms either, but this just doesn’t seem right…Germans seem like the most likely nationality to have smoke alarms (well maybe Scandinavian countries first, but then Germany for sure).

Those are all the stories from the day, the rest was just going to class and Chinese lessons. Over and out!