Day Forty one – Shop till you drop

I am up listening to Macca it’s 6.30am Shenzhen time, Chris & Jill are still asleep. We have two days to go. Sunday is a quiet day no Doctors rounds or rehab. As I sit here a hand just tapped on my shoulder and Jill asked “Who are you writing to??? she is off to have a shower.
The weather forecast for Shenzhen hardly ever changes this time of the year

Fair Light Cloud, temperature 29C, Wind 4mph, and Humidity 79%

Breakfast consists of leftover Chinese for Chris, Porridge for Jill & cornflakes for me, plus toast and vegemite. This was followed by the nurses delivering Jill’s tablets and taking temperature and asking that question. Sunday is the day the doctors have off.
Because there is no rehab on Sundays Jill decided to take a walk up the passage. When we had left Jill was going for a walk and she had met Hal who accompanied her to the balcony and back.
Jill has been on our backs to go shopping, so after a mild discussion we were hounded out of the room. We decided to do the block walk again and buy Jill a pair of slacks and a top.
Imagine two males in a dress shop where the assistants do not talk or understand English and the only words we have learnt in Chinese are Hello & Thank You. To try and get the correct size pants we had measured and marked on a piece of tape the size of a pair she had. What we have found is you cannot take the word of the marked size. I am certain that L means small and XXXL means medium and so forth. The girls in the shops giggled when I produced my measuring device to check the sizes. However it worked and we have finished up with 5 pairs of pants and only one is a bit short in the leg- fits otherwise. We also were able to get several tops and only one is a bit large. The next purchase was Chris’s for Nicole. These turned out much easier than buying for Jill and I’m certain Nicole will be pleased with the selection. While on this odyssey we were also searching for Jill’s pink phone- which is turning out to be very elusive. The purchase of a small umbrella was also interesting as they happened to be in a Bra shop. Picture me , 4 young Chinese girls in amongst bras etc. Our final destination was SEG Electronics for the memory cards – success at last. We did the deal – but they did not have enough stock to fulfil the order and promised if we came back after 4 every thing would be OK. We could not believe we had been away about 2 hours but had made some great purchases.
On the way back through the hospital more Chinese food was purchased for lunch.
Four O’clock quickly came around and here we are leaving Jill alone while we go shopping. The problem is the super uneven footpaths, several steps to get into things not to mention the heat and humidity. The footpaths and alleys were never designed for the unsure of foot let alone wheelchairs. So Jill wisely let the males go shopping – I’m sure when she is back in Oz either Allison or Nicole will be able to encourage her out. Jill so liked one of our purchases that we were instructed to get the same but a different colour. Our return trip took a more adventuress direction – out through the hospital gardens and down a laneway. This let us see a different China.. There were small shops, several Chinese men playing cards on the footpath, kids playing, rubbish, smells and the need to manouver around obstacles, car parked at odd angles etc. Towards the end of the lane were small food shops, which were certainly quite busy. Just before we left the lane there was a woman repairing boots. She had a hand operated sewing machine and was sewing the upper on to the sole .Again she had several people talking to her while she worked away.
We made a quick stop at the dress shop and picked up the XXXL- medium pants for Jill. On the way back to SEG we came across the DVD stall and Chris got some dodgy DVD’s. We will make sure they play in English otherwise we will donate them to the hospital collection.
Back at SEG we still had a small problem I didn’t have quite enough cash and when we via sign language explained this and that we needed to go to the bank. They sent one of the girls to show us where the bank was. The only problem was the bank next to SEG would not accept either Chris’s or my card. I told them we needed to go to a Bank of China and the manager said he would take us in his car. Five minutes later we were driven to the nearest Bank of China and successfully with drew the cash /paid the guy and he drove us back – how’s that for service. Believe it or not we took two hours to get the cards.
Chris has organised with Hal, Marion and Kath to have dinner with us tonight. This was Kath & Marion’s first experience with Hal in full flight. He exaggerates the southern accent “I’m from Charleston South Carolina and I’m a true southern gentleman.??? He certainly has the ability to lighten the atmosphere and make our time here more enjoyable. I wish we had met him earlier. I am certain that his friend ship with Chris will be lasting.

Guess what, Chris & Hal just got locked of the floor. They have sat in the restaurant until it closed and came up in the service lift which was locked at level 19. They had to go back down and get on the main lifts up to Level 19 again to find the door to the lift was also locked. They sat there and banged on the door until a nurse finally heard them and let then in. The access doors lock automatically and can only be opened from inside.

It’s 11pm and time for bed –I just turned around to check on Jill and found her kneeling on the bed, feeling very happy with herself and saying “I couldn’t do that before” and she was right- a couple of weeks ago the therapist told Jill to kneel on the low massage table and she found this impossible and kept falling over, untill he finally said to stop and not to try again. “Another Small step” see you tomorrow on the net.

Pat & Margaret asked when do we fly in?

We fly out on Tuesday morning 9:10 am Hong Kong time and arrive into Melbourne at 7:55pm 0n Qantas flight QF030.