Leisure House

August 11, 2006



At approximately 3 a.m. this morning my air conditioner ground to a complete halt. I lay there hoping it would come roaring back to life as the humid air bore down upon me. By 4 a.m. I had given up on trying to sleep and began roaming around the room, passing the time until the 8 a.m. breakfast buffet.

I sat with Joon at breakfast and we talked more about our amorphous travel plans, maybe to South Korea this time. We commiserated momentarily on being foreigners in China, not knowing Chinese, and how I thought the coffee was weak.

Soon after I realized that I’d been living in the past. I found out today that it is Friday and not Thursday. I was exactly one day behind. This would normally be irrelevant except that my first day of class is now tomorrow instead of in two days and I didn’t know exactly at what time or what level of English the students spoke or anything else that might be extremely important.

In the initial throes of this crucial moment I decided to visit the Leisure House. I had discovered Leisure Houses, which are actually far less dirty than they sound, yesterday. This particular one had wicker swings and fake ivy and brewed ground coffee.



I spent 2 solid hours studying Chinese and enjoying caramel macchiatos. Unfortunately at this rate it will cost me close to two dollars an hour to hang out in China, which isn’t bad at all in retrospect.