Well, if Mandy’s near perpetual presence in my apartment didn’t saturate it enough with estrogen, the arrival of my new roommate should do the job. Not that I’m complaining, this place is definitely in need of a woman’s touch. I mean, I consider myself pretty ‘in touch’ with the more feminine sides of Ryan but at the end of the day I am a man and there’s just some things girls know how to do that boys don’t… such as how to properly throw a sarong to give a room some colour and how to use the right body washes so the smell lingers in the bathroom – covering the other odors that usually lurk there.
So… Adria arrived yesterday after a somewhat convoluted system of information from my manager. I swear they either don’t tell her a thing or she pretends she doesn’t know when I ask, but it seemed rather strange to me when she told me the other day that I’ll be getting a new roommate the next day, but didn’t know the age, sex or nationality of the person. I placed bets with Mandy that it would be a 50-ish Australian man. Mandy took it with her guess of a 23-24 year old girl, though she did say British and Adria’s from America. Personally I think both our guesses had more to do with our fears than actual conjecture.
Adria seems to be settling in pretty good. I get the sense that she might start longing to return to Shenzhen soon, as Jinzhou is a far cry from the bustle of being able to boot over to Hong Kong for the weekend. The best was when Mandy suggest we take her to the Jinzhou zoo and show her the dirty monkeys (I added it also had a very pathetic bear!).
And speaking of Mandy… most of this week will be spent sopping up as much time with her as possible. She leaves this Saturday for her home in Guizhou, happy birthday to me. We’ve had our ups and downs over the past month and a half but we’ve settled into something quite lovely and I’m going to miss her a lot. It’s little solace that she’ll be back for a few days before I leave at the end of August, but it’s enough to take a little of the acerb out of the moment.
Anyway, class in 45 minutes and I’ve not showered yet.
