Worst. Spring Break. Ever.

Damn!

This is now officially the worst Spring Break in the history of Spring Breaks. I'm supposed to be on the way to the airport now to fly down to teach in Yangshuo for two weeks but I'm not.

If you think that the reason is connected to my recent broken knee-cap - perhaps that the physio hasn't gone well - then you're wrong. The physio has gone just fine. Of course I've spent the last two months virtually housebound but since the plaster came off, just four days ago, I've been improving rapidly.

No the reason is that Baiyin is in the middle of nowhere. Most of the time I don't realise or think about just how isolated this damned city is. When it does choose to remind me it's a pain in the backside. It's just reminded me. 

It snows one day a year in Baiyin. Today's the day. And what that means is that on the one day when I positively have to get to the airport to fly down to Yangshuo for that training - which is supposed to begin at 9 O'clock tomorrow - the highway is closed because of bad weather. They won't, they say, be able to open it until Wednesday which means that I will probably now NOT be going down to do the training. There is, apparently, NO OTHER WAY to get to Lanzhou airport - no other way to get to anywhere, to get out of the city at all. We are trying to find out if there is a train: there is a station but when they run at all, it's once a day. That would then have to be followed by a taxi (if that section of the highway is open). The flight I would need to reschedule for tomorrow (if the airport isn't also closed by the weather).
Would you like to guess how much snow I can see from my window? Scarcely a light dusting. It shouldn't be enough to stop a skateboard.

And, the crowning glory for the holiday, there is a very good chance that I will soon be without a girlfriend again as she is fretting about whether we have any real possibility of a future because of our different backgrounds and the fact that neither of us wants to permanently leave their country. She's becoming increasingly distant as she tries to protect herself against the real likelihood that at some time I will be leaving and she will be staying. It's not making for a close relationship.  

Oh joy. Sometimes I wish I'd never left England at all.