Moving to China on a Whim!: Welcome Back to China, You American F***s

We went home for Christmas and had a fabulous time. We got back yesterday and Vivian brought Smudgie to the train station to greet us. He was so cute and it was the perfect way to fall back into our “real lives”. However, when we got to our apartment, we were greeted by a less than perfect scenario. Adam walked into the apartment before me and he said, “There’s sh*t all over the floor.” At first I thought he meant that cockroaches had overrun the place and had left their droppings all over the apartment. We did have a colony living under our fridge that we’d bombed before we left. But then I walked in and saw this stuff covering most of our living room floor:

Then, the kitchen floor was much worse:

And under the sink was so gross we could barely stand to look at it:

SOMETHING had happened with the sink and it leaked all over the kitchen floor and spilled over into the living room. OF COURSE, this would happen to us. More crap has happened to our two Chinese apartments than has happened to all the previous American apartments we’ve ever lived in combined. This is China. This is what we’ve come back to. After much swearing, and Adam coining the phrase "Welcome back to China, you American F***s", we decided to just clean it up and get someone to figure it out the next day. So poor Smudgie had to go in his crate while we cleaned. It was caked on pretty good, so I had to use a scrubber brush:

But the living room wasn’t as bad so Adam did that with a mop. So today, a repairman came to look at it, said the sink was fine, and left. We were afraid that maybe the pipes had frozen while we were gone because we turned the heat off. I didn't want to turn the heat completely off, but when we lived in our old apartment, we were told to turn everything off, including flipping all the breakers whenever we were going to be gone for even a few days because something (namely the water heater) might spontaneously combust. But apparently the pipes had not frozen. I took a nap at noon and when I woke up, there was an e-mail from Gary (our relocation representative) telling us what happened. He said that a few days ago, the sewage storage tank under the building filled up, but didn’t flow out smoothly and instead backed up into several apartments. Well that’s just great. So when Adam said there’s sh*t all over the floor, he was telling the truth! And they promised it wouldn’t happen again. I’m just glad it happened to other people too. Another repairman came in the afternoon and he asked me with several hand gestures if the mess was only in the kitchen or in the living room also. I told him it was all over the living room, but I cleaned it up. And he had a look on his face like, oh my dear god… Some cleaning people are coming tomorrow to deal with the mess under the sink since we didn’t dare touch it. I hope they do a good enough job.

Here are some long overdue pictures of Smudgie to lighten the mood:

Playing with a stick