Plum Rains

For about 2 weeks now, we have had the most humid, sticky weather. We are told the 'plum rain belt' has arrived. It has felt as though we have been walking through heavy storm clouds, the air; a wet blanket wrapping around us. It has made me lethargic and a bit down, I was looking forward to enjoying the last few days of term, meeting up with friends, trying new coffee shops and going for runs but instead its been too stormy for runs, friends have cancelled and the pouring rains. have left me demotivated to fly about on an ebike. It was so suffocatingly humid at the parkrun on Saturday; we were literally ringing the sweat out of our clothes. Delightful. But finally, the day before yesterday, the pressure cooker of heat and precipitation exploded in a marvellous, (slightly frightening), storm. The sky was positively charged with electric currents, lightening flickered every few minutes, sharply followed by the most deafening thunder claps I've ever heard. I did almost crawl under the duvet at one point but instead I ferociously washed dishes and sent love messages to Mike incase we died.

I've also been missing family and friends back 'home' , not sure why as an England that riots away and urinates on its various statues doesn't sound inviting at all. I guess although we're more settled for sure, its a little strange not to be visiting the motherland as we have done in the previous two summers. Its disconcerting to know that our travel options are so severely limited, even within China. Its worrying not to know when we can safely fly 'home' and flight prices have gone sky high. We were thinking to explore some other regions of China instead, such as Guilin but there would so much hassle in regards to potentially being turned away from hotels due to being foreign, or not having the right health code, or hot having a recent negative nucleic acid test for Covid19, or being exposed to new cases on pubic transport, (there has been a new case in our province this week and more in Beijing), having to quarantine again, we just can't put the children through that for the sake of a river and a few mountains. Also, we don't like the idea of an organised tour guided approach because we might feel too reigned in. So that leaves us with quite a narrow field of options. It may be for the best and we are convicted that the Lord would have us reduce our travelling for the forseeable future.

Mike has just asked if we could get a dog and told me a sob story from a colleague about a lady who lived in Suzhou who kept saving dogs from the streets and ended up with about 50 of them and eventually had a mental breakdown and took them all to SAPA, (the local animal shelter) and told them they had to take them off her. So the shelter is brimming over. My siblings and I rescued a puppy from under a tree when we were a kids, but the difference then was that he was only a few days old and on the brink of starvation and hadn't had the chance to be mistreated. I'm a little worried about taking on a potentially rabid, flea-ridden animal, but these days you do seem to get some funny looks if you don't own a couple of stray cats and at least one rescue dog, so what with moving into a slightly larger apartment soon, perhaps we should give in to the peer pressure, up our game and adopt a cute puppy.