Stitches Out and Combustible Balconies

Rick just got his stitches out. We were sitting talking to our team leaders here when it suddenly dawned on me why the nurse was so adamant that we NOT come on Friday. Tomorrow is Tomb Sweeping Day, a national holiday. Traditionally families go to the graves of loved ones and clean them up. (But that was in Buddhist Taiwan, and one needed to be sure that the ancestors were appeased.) Here it is a day to spend with your family enjoying spring, flying kites, eating a picnic, etc. However, we do not have classes on Friday so we were completely ignoring that it is a holiday. When we were arguing with the nurse on Tuesday about not coming back until Friday, she never once mentioned it was a holiday. I suppose it was just so obvious that what was the use of reminding these silly foreigners; everyone knows holidays after all. Anyway, it was about 4 in the afternoon after Rick had been teaching most of the day when we realized that tomorrow probably would not be a good time, and hopped on our bike and went and were able to get the stitches removed.

Of course there was all of life going on and effecting the decision as well. This morning a housing official came and said that we needed to be sure we did not have combustible material on our balcony.  Others went to many people in our housing complex. Combustible materials however have various definitions. Our team leaders were given a different version from ours. Confusion. In trying to get it worked out, the question went from us to our Pastor/Administrator who just arrived for a visit in China, to our director in the US, to our administrator here, to the housing authorities, back to us. Our balconies are very precious spaces. There is no storage in our one bedroom apartments, soooo many, many things are put out on our closed in balcony, as well as where we hang our laundry. As our members are shrinking we also have condensed 5 apartments into 2, and thus lots of stuff. So tomorrow we will be cleaning out the balcony and trying to decide if we can get rid of things. What will be needed in the future? What is combustible? What do we do with perfectly good items, but not needed? You know the questions, but multiple it a few times because of living overseas and the things not really being yours. I am glad that we got the stitches out so tomorrow can be devoted to figuring this out.