My intention was to return later that day to try again with the cleaning, but it never happened. No one returned to the apartment until the next day around 10 a.m. Colonel headed over and found that everything we'd left in the apartment was gone. Someone stole it all except 1 trash can, 1 mop, and 1 broom with dustpan.
I called several of the Chinese folks in the foreign affairs office and eventually got someone who answered their phone. I talked with Mr. Yu (he's sort of in charge) and explained the situation. He called Mr. Liang (he helps with our computers and internet), so Mr. Liang called me. I repeated the story to Mr. Liang. By this time several hours had gone by, so our family decided to go out for lunch and consider what we'd do about buying more tools and cleaning supplies. While we were at the atm getting some money, I got a call from Nick.
I repeated the story to Nick and learned that the school had no intentions of doing anything about this problem. He kept asking how much everything was that was stolen. I told him that it was probably around 500 yuan, but lots of the things we'd brought from America were also stolen. He told us that we should move everything into the apartment at one time and not leave a few things here and there overnight. It seems that he totally overlooked the fact that someone had come into the apartment and stolen things. I became so frustrated trying to explain this to him. He made it clear that no one in the school would question the people who had keys to the apartment and that the school didn't have money to fix locks and pay workers to turn on the water in the apartment. This comment rubbed me the wrong way. Our contract states that the school would give us a safe living environment. If the school can't do that, then they need to stop hiring teachers immediately. Nick told me that he has no power to do anything in this situation and that no one else does either. They all basically pass the buck to someone else and nothing gets done.
We must have talked for about 20 minutes. I pretty much laid everything on the table. From day one at this school our family has been unexpected and seemingly unwanted. We've not been taken care of (as the contract states that we should) from our living arrangements to our working arrangements. Nick was patient while I pretty much let out all my frustrations about the situation we're in. Eventually I felt that it was totally pointless to continue the conversation. The school is just unresponsive in so many ways.
Colonel and I ended up going out to buy new things since NIck said that neither the school nor the police would be able to help us recover our stolen things. After my conversation with Nick, I kind of lost my desire to even try anymore. My emotions were on edge from dealing with people who just don't care and refuse to try. I guess you could say that I just sort of gave up hope of having any sort of comfortable or decent living arrangements here.
We bought new tools and cleaning supplies. That night at home Nick dropped buy. He wanted to rehash the conversation we'd had earlier, but I didn't see the point, so I asked him to just not talk about it anymore. Nick does that sometimes when a bad situation arises. He doesn't understand that talking about it a lot doesn't help the situation. Anyway, he finally said they'd change the locks on the doors and get the water turned on as soon as they could. He said we should go ahead and move our things in, but I insisted that we wait since someone still has the key to the apartment and they like to steal things.
When all was said and done, that day felt like a total waste from beginning to end. We didn't just have a few things stolen from us, we had our hope for a safe living place stolen, our trust in the school was stolen, our respect for the people who "help" us here was stolen. Nick was so concerned that he or the others in the school would lose face with whoever stole things from us. He should have been concerned with how he and the school would lose face with us and the other teachers here.
2 days ago, new locks were placed on the apartment doors and the water was turned on in the apartment. The internet still isn't hooked up, but it's a step in the right direction. I hope the school appreciates our decision not to call the police in this situation. Even if they don't want to help protect us, we will help to protect them (and ourselves) in some ways. Every decision we make here has a strategic reasoning behind it and we'll see where this one leads.