We had dropped into our school for a minute to set up water delivery to our apartment but we actually walked into the middle of an ayi interview hiring session! We'd been following an outdated schedule that the school gave us and totally overlooked the interviews. Luckily, we'd already gone through the resumes and told them which potential ayi's we'd like to interview (all the ones that said they like pets). We were sat down with the first lady and we liked her from the get go. She just had a really kind face. There were supposed to be people there to translate the interviews, but they were busy, so we set about interviewing her alone- us using broken Chinese and her using broken English. At one point she pulled out her phone and her friend Bobo translated for us, which was quite helpful. Thank you, Bobo.
In the end we agreed on a price that is less than 1% of our monthly wage, and she'll come twice a week to do laundry, dishes, scoop the cat litter, and clean a bit. We hit a snag at the end of the interview when it came to discussing the training time. We needed to be home for her first visit to show her around the apartment and how we'd like things done. She decided that she would get our school's housing liaison, Jack, to translate for us. The only problem is that Jack was already helping a line of about 5 other foreign teachers. Our ayi didnt' care- she stormed to the front of the line and forced him to translate for us. I was seriously too embarrassed to speak, and a couple of the teachers in line were being dicks about it. "I've got a wife and kids here. Hurry up" and rolling their eyes and shit. So, yeah we're already making friends, but if something like that bothered them so much they're not going to last long in China anyway.
So, tomorrow night, after our first day (!) of training we are training our ayi. She'll be coming in the mornings when we're at work, so we probably won't see her much, but I have a feeling she's going to make a huge difference in our lives.Oh, and the water arrived yesterday too. And an oven. And now I have someone to clean them. What more could a person want?
UPDATE: Our ayi quit before she even started! Wednesday night, just before she was supposed to come over for training, another teacher we hadn't met before called us. She can speak a little Chinese and our ayi also works for her. She said that the ayi felt like she had taken on too much work and wouldn't be able to work for us too. She said the ayi knew another ayi friend she could introduce to us so we agreed, and they both came over last night.
New ayi is nice too (anyone willing to wash my dishes is nice). We went over what we needed done and showed her around the apartment and she's going to start this morning. Can't wait to come home to a spotless apartment!
Oh, and the original ayi also revealed to us why she is so overworked. After cleaning for the other teacher who called us, she then works the rest of the day for our principal. She said that his family is "too tall" and she has to cook so much food for them that she's exhausted. Oh, the life of an ayi,
UPDATE #2: As of September 1st, Ayi has been bumped up to 4 times a week and now she's cooking for us too. It's just way too nice to come home to ironed, folded underwear to only do so twice a week :)
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