A Long Day

 Yesterday was very long and very cold!

Every other Saturday Mikey does volunteer English classes at different community centers. When we were living in the same city it wasn't a problem, I would stay home and cover his classes if he was late back. Moving has made the logistics more difficult. For me to get to the other city would involve using two different trains, something I don't want to do or going in the morning and hanging around until I have to teach in the evening.

Yesterday's plan was for me to go with Mikey in the morning and wait at the local shopping mall with Christopher until it was time to go to the community center in the afternoon. When I woke up yesterday morning I was too tired to go. I asked David to drop Christopher and me at the train station but David took us to the other city! That helped a lot!

Christopher and I had lunch at an Italian restaurant in the mall. This restaurant isn't too expensive, we had onion soup with garlic bread and shared a pizza. The soup was nice and warming!

onion soup

pizza

lunch

After lunch we met up with Hannah. She was at work in the city and wanted to come back home for a couple of days!  We did a bit of shopping, a lot of window shopping!

Then it was time to go to the community center.  We thought there would be a bus but when we went to the bus station we couldn't find a bus to the area we were going to and I was getting too cold to look around. We got a taxi with heated seats! It was the first time to use heated seats, I didn't want to get out!

When we got to the community center we were greeted by a rather rude lady! The community center had double booked the room!  Monday is Coming of Age Day, when all young people who have turned 20 get to celebrate becoming an adult. For the young ladies it means paying a small fortune to hire a kimono for the day!  The room that we usually use was being used for young ladies from the area to come and get ready.  Putting on a kimono is a complicated process, something most ladies don't do now, so the shop that hires the kimono also has staff that helps you dress and styles your hair.  

We asked this lady about the room, why she was set up in there as we had booked this room for every Saturday afternoon 2 months ago. Her response wasn't nice at all. She didn't apologize for the mix up or explain anything to us. She was going on about something but I couldn't catch what she was saying so I followed her to the room. She rounded on me and said "Don't come in here!"  I saw the kimonos hanging and said that they were really beautiful. Her response was "Don't look at them!!"  She then stormed out!  

So we were stuck with using the gym, a massive, cold room!  Hannah paid the meter to run the heating system but it didn't warm up the room at all. I had one lesson with very young kids, 4 and 6 year old brother and sister. I knew that using the gym wouldn't work for them, so we sat in the foyer to teach them. That was awful, it was so cold my fingers were numb!

The other classes we did in the gym but it was far too cold! 

I survived, somehow! I was so happy to get in the car with the heater blasting! 

Hannah came back with us, she doesn't have anything tomorrow so wanted to come home for a couple of days! As much as she likes her independence, coming back is nice! And she gets to hang with the cats for a couple of days!