Chad has been doing a lot of traveling around Asia lately. It first started with a 8 day trip back the US, then he was home for a few days, then off again for 12 days. Last Friday after he had been gone for 5 days, our ayi asked if he was coming homeon Saturday. I said, 'no' we still have another week. She then replied, "you come to my house and I'll cook you sweet & sour chicken with rice." Then she mentioned something about singing at 2:00. So, I had no idea really what was going on :) LOL- I asked several of my friends if they had even heard of anyone going over to their ayi's homes before and noone had, so I was a little nervous. I had no idea what to expect!
We had plans to go to a book signing that morning, but then we headed over to her house. It took us about 45 minutes in the car to get there, tons of traffic. She had given me her address in Chinese to give our driver. Well, he stopped and was looking around like he was confused, as we were in front of a mall. He gave her a call and next I know she is at the van. She was so excited to see us and carried Brady all the way to her apt complex, which was above the mall :) The living conditions here in Shanghai are not the greatest for most of the locals, so wasn't sure what was in store for us..
We walked into a nice building, took a ride up to the 7th floor in a nice elevator, walked down the nice hallway to apt 7B. She warned the kids that it was small, but they still didn't keep their comments to themselves about it! LOL..
We walked in and immediately to the right was a full bathroom- shower and normal toilet, which was a relief! I had been planning on holding it for awhile and was praying the kids would be alright.. Ha.. Most locals do not have their own toilet and definitely not their own shower!
We walked through a wall of hanging beads with a fridge (also not common) on the left next to a table and chairs. We'll call this the dining room and living room as it also had a couch and a large hutch. The coolest thing about this room what was in the hutch. Rilynn had traced a picture of Hello Kitty and wrote Susan's Chinese name (Sun Xia) on it and had given it to her awhile back. Susan had that picture in her hutch, framed :) Backed up to the hutch was a full size bed (or maybe it was just a board) as it was ROCK hard! Behind the hutch was a shower curtain pinned up for decorative purposes.. On the wall facing the bed was a large flat screen TV!!!! She also even had cable, as she put on some nice English movies for us :) I was shocked to see that.. Right next to the 'bedroom' was a revolving door that led to the kitchen. I did not go back there to see what it looked like, but could tell it was very tiny. Her apartment was very clean though, just small. It was pretty much the size of a master bedroom and all just one open room.
Susan has a daughter, but she does not live with her, but rather her grandparents. Susan and her husband both live and work in Shanghai. This is a very common situation where the parents leave their kids to find work and make money to send back to their families. Susan's sister did come over to help her cook up a feast for us. She seemed very nice, but spoke hardly any English.
I noticed that Susan had my bilingual cookbook opened up and was following the recipe in there and as she said, "Chinese no eat like this :)". We had white rice with sweet and sour chicken (using forks as she knows us! LOL), apples and kiwis peeled and cut up, hamburger patties (strange combo), pork meatballs, and then a whole slew of dumplings!! I was able to eat a dumpling with a chopstick though :) The whole table was filled with food. Brady did pretty good trying everything, but Rilynn stuck to the fruit..
Next thing I know, there is a knock at her door. Ended up being her former employee from Namibia, Africa stopping in for a visit. I had emailed this lady before as a reference and she was very nice. Won't lie, as it was a tad awkward having us both there, but it was fine. She had been in town for a week and was heading back. It did make me feel better that obviously they had a good relationship if she were to visit her while she was here.
Kids were winding down as it wasn't the most exciting place to spend 2 1/2 hours, so we went home. It turned out that at 2:00 there was going to be a performance inside the mall, but it was Sunday not Saturday. She wanted us to come back the next day, but we had plans to attend a birthday party already. However, when she came on Monday she showed me the pics on her camera of it. It looked pretty cool, seemed to have been a variety type show- acrobats, magic, dancing..
After talking to some more people I realized that what the kids and I experienced was not a typical invitation and that we should feel very honored that she invited us to her home. And that she must be very proud of where she lives, otherwise she would not have done that. So, after her only part time for 3 months, I am pretty sure we found a gem of an ayi!!
Book signing at the M on the Bund
