Monday sucks!

Today did not get off to a good start... Charlie woke up at some ungodly hour, I don't know exactly when since we don't have an alarm clock yet, but it was still dark out.  It took me forever to get back to sleep and the kids were up way before I was ready to start the day.  I decided to check out the City Market that Lucas told me about near the Carrefour to see what kind of things they have that I can't find at the Carrefour.  The shuttle is going to leave for Carrefour at 9:30, we are dresses and ready to go, but have to wait for a second elevator because the first is filled with the maids and their things.  We miss the shuttle by about 5 seconds.  So, I go to the office and ask them to write out the name and address of the City Market by Carrefour and to call me a taxi.  We get in the taxi and by the time I realize that we are not going to the right place it is too late and I decide to see if they have taken me to a different market.  I end up at a very high end mall, as in, I don't even bother to window shop.  There is a City Super there which does have imported foods, but not much from America and I leave empty handed.  So we ended up taking a 48RMB taxi trip through the city. 

The kids must know it is Monday and that Mondays suck because no one is listening to me today.  There are many time outs and hands slapped.  I am trying to get laundry done before it piles up to high but there is an error and the washer didn't do the last spin cycle and I can't figure out how to do just a single spin cycle.  I run the dryer, don't know why, I should have just wrung everything out and hung it to dry on my new handy dandy drying wrack, but I ran the dryer and everything came out very wet an hour later.  I start a second load and decide to give the City Market another try.  I have the driver take me to Carrefour and I walk from there.  Miracle of miracles I actually find it and manage to get everything I need for baking chocolate chip cookies except for the salt which a co-worker is bringing back from the States for us since it is not a common item here and therefore costly.  So, I'm hoping to be doing some baking later this week.  I did manage to get two more loads of laundry done and my new iPhone somehow connected to iTunes and downloaded most of my apps.  We were having all kinds of trouble with this last night since iTunes didn't like that we've moved out of the country and more importantly to China, which surprise, it is more complicated because it is China! 

BASF needs to put out a manual for its employees going on delegations.  The number of things we are finding out from co-workers that should have been told to us by HR is ridiculous.  Worse, getting HR to actually help you is a joke.  It is beyond frustrating, when it seems that the stuff we are being told piece by piece, mostly by co-workers, should be in one easy to access location for all new delegates.  I feel like I've fallen down the rabbit hole and the way out is a closely guarded secret.