The Week of Bad Luck

This Wednesday at about 4:00 my stomach started hurting. At first I thought it was just because my pants were too tight and they were digging into my stomach. These jeans have absolutely no stretch in them and I did buy them a bit small so that they would still fit even after I lost more weight. So I unbuttoned them, but the pain persisted. Luckily we were off work soon, so I figured, I just need to go home and lay down and it’ll be fine. But when we got home, laying down didn’t work. We had a tutoring session that night and I couldn’t concentrate at all. About half way through, I had to go throw up, so we cut it short. From that point on, I was throwing up about every 10-20 minutes, with the stomach pain getting worse and worse. Nothing could calm my stomach, not even hot water or tea. I didn’t have a fever, in fact, my temperature was 94.7 at one point. So I didn’t think it was the flu or anything. Just some weird stomach bug. I managed to stop throwing up at about 1am, but I still couldn’t get any sleep because my stomach hurt in every position. The next day, Adam stayed home with me in case I needed to go to the doctor. He took very good care of me. :) I didn’t throw up all morning, but after taking a few sips of chicken broth, all hell broke loose again. So we called in reinforcements (Dreamer and Sophie). I had read online that peppermint tea and ginger were good for calming stomachs so I asked if they could bring me some. They did, along with some weird Chinese stomach medicine and a giant vase full of flowers. Now the weird Chinese stomach medicine looks like some kind of small animal droppings and smells really weird. (pictured below)

But MAN did it do the trick. I was feeling better in just minutes and by nightfall, the stomachache was gone. I couldn’t wait to sleep, it was glorious. I have NO IDEA what I had or how I got it. It’s a complete mystery because all I had eaten on Wednesday were 3 egg whites, a dragonfruit, some oatmeal, and an apple (and yes, I washed the apple). All I know is I never want to have that again. But in case I do, I’ve got some miracle meds.

Another story: The main circuit breaker switch in our apartment had been shutting off whenever we used the heat so we couldn’t keep the heat on. Our landlady met the repair guy at our apartment so that I could go to work. When we got home from work, the landlady knocked on our door and tried to tell us something about not keeping the heater on all the time or something. We didn’t understand so she eventually gestured “never mind”. But then she went into the bathroom and pointed at the toilet paper and then pointed at the toilet and shook her head. We were like, “No way….” I knew you couldn’t flush toilet paper down squat toilets because the plumbing can’t handle it but I thought regular toilets had newer plumbing. Plus we haven’t been having any problems. But somebody must have said something to her and of course she knows who to blame. Haha. Anyways, this was one cultural difference I really didn’t want to get on board with but now we have to.

Another crappy thing that happened this week was, we found out the tickets to New Zealand we thought we’d bought, didn’t actually get purchased. WHY? Because the flight was full, but kayak.com, orbitz.com, and cheaptickets.com were all still showing the flights and let us order them anyways. After many many tries using other websites, we discovered that ALL the flights to New Zealand on the dates we want are booked. So we’re not going. And I hear it’s a nightmare to try to travel within China during CNY so we’ve decided to stay put.

AND, just last night, Adam’s last remaining stainless steel crown popped off. The others he has have been converted to porcelain over the years but this one was still going strong so he hadn’t gotten it replaced yet. The original plan was to have Adam’s parents send over a repair kit, since I doubt they’d sell such a convenient thing here in China. But it turns out; Dreamer’s uncle is a dentist. Our first stroke of good luck all week! The procedure appears to be the same here as in the US so he’s going to go in on Monday. I’m sure ready for this week/year to be over.

Hopefully, this is just 2011’s way of getting all the bad luck out of the way so that next year can be super awesome!

Smudgie wearing a towel

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! In honor of Christmas, I took a picture of one of the holly bushes that grows outside our apartment:

They don’t really celebrate Christmas here even though they pretend like they do by plastering Santa’s face on every storefront. But the company wanted to make us feel at home so they decided to throw us a Christmas party. The party was to begin with playing pool at a pool hall, then dinner, and then singing karaoke at a KTV. But before that, I had to go buy new jeans because my jeans recently got a hole in them. There’s an intern who just started working with us a couple of weeks ago named Dreamer and she’s really cool. She speaks good English and she said she wanted to help me shop, which was a life saver. So we met at the outdoor mall, and the first store we go to, I found some jeans I really like. I never get this lucky! And I got to have them hemmed for free at this quaint little tailoring outpost:

I was technically done with my shopping at that point but I felt like I was in the zone so we continued. Dreamer kept linking arms with me, which I thought was cute. When we first got to China, we saw girls walking down the street linking arms and we wondered if it was an indication of a lesbian relationship but then we saw so many more girls doing the same thing, we figured there can’t be THAT many lesbians in China. And now I know for sure, it’s just a thing friends do. Haha. Anyways, I smelled something really good in the air and Dreamer told me it was these nut things so we got some. I’d never seen them before but you know what? They were chestnuts! Like “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” chestnuts. Something I’d heard about all my life, I was now trying them for the first time in China. They were fantastic.

Well, we didn’t find anything else, so I went home and got ready for the party. Mr. Lu picked us up and took us to the pool hall, which is not that far away from the Carrefour! Here is a picture:

And here is a picture of Dreamer and Mandy, my two best friends (Mandy is KeKe’s English name, in case you’re trying to keep track of all the Chinese people):

Here’s me and Adam wearing our panda hats, which were a Christmas gift from Anna (a girl from HR):
When we first got there, we had quite a few people come over to watch us play. They probably expected us to be good… but we weren’t. We were terrible. The only game we won, happened because the other team scratched on the 8 ball. Also, they had employees there that literally just stood around waiting to rack the balls for you after your game. That’s all they did. How is that a job? Adam said they didn’t even rack very well.

So then we had dinner, which was delicious. At the end, they ordered apple pie because I think they think all Americans like apple pie. But I don't so Adam ate on my behalf. After that, we went to a KTV, which was nothing like I expected. I thought it would be like a regular bar with one big room and that we’d be singing in front of random people like in the US. But it turns out, your party gets a private room, and you’re just singing in front of people you know. And some people can sing well, others not so much. Here are some photos:

On our way home, we saw these two santa girls:

And to illustrate my point about men spitting everywhere, here is a picture of a spit can, which pretty much all taxis have in them, for your convenience:

When we got home, we found this note stuck in our door jam:

It reads: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, From; a Chinese Family 2011, 12, 24

An anonymous Christmas note!! How sweet! I have a feeling it’s from our next door neighbors.

This one goes out to Vicki and Ed, our petsitters in PA. A big hug from Smudgie!

Plans and Observations

Well, it’s official, we’re vacationing in New Zealand in late January/early February. Bought the tickets on Tuesday. Yay! We’re going to spend the first couple days of Chinese New Year in China, then off to a summery oasis. The only bad part about it is that Smudgie has to stay at a kennel and the kennels here are just pet stores that have a couple of cages in the back that your pet can stay in. They’ll let him out a couple of times per day but for the most part Smudgie will have to sit in his cage scared and lonely and probably angry because there’ll be other dogs barking in the vicinity. I feel so bad for him. The kennel we wanted to bring him to (which looked nicer) said they’d be closed during Chinese New Year, which is bogus! Anyways, the plan is to spend 6 days in and around Auckland and then head out to Great Barrier Island to take in some nature for a day and a half. We’re excited!

This past week I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing, on TWO different occasions, small children peeing and pooping on the sidewalk. There’s something really hilarious about the way a bundled up toddler looks while squatting. They’re wearing like five layers of clothing, but their butts are
hanging out of their open crotch pants. Also, I don’t understand how this aids in potty training. Sure, it teaches them how to squat, but it doesn’t teach them self control… Must find out: at what age is it not ok to relieve one’s self on the sidewalk?

Adam brought up a good point the other day. As disciplined as the Chinese are when it comes to work, it seems like in everyday life, they just do whatever they want, whenever they want. Kids can poop and pee wherever (I even saw a small puddle of pee inside the Carrefour once). Men spit all the time, sometimes indoors. If there are traffic rules, nobody follows them. Skipping in line is common. And Adam’s favorite: clogging up the aisle at the grocery store and not caring that you are in everyone’s way! That one is a staple.

Yesterday we went out to dinner with Mr. Tong and a bunch of his friends. Mr. Tong owns 1/3 of the plant and he has a lot of what they call “guanxi” (basically he’s very connected). At dinner with us was the chief of the Huainan police, the head of the Huainan hospital, the president and vice president in charge of taxes, the Superintendent of the Huainan middle schools, two of Mr. Tong’s classmates/good friends, and several other government officials. All of them toasted us individually and said if we need anything, we can come to them. Wow… that’s pretty sweet. And it turns out the Superintendent lady also has a pomeranian and we told her about our kennel problem and she said she thinks that JasonPet (the one that’s closed during Chinese New Year) is the best one. But she said she will try to find us one better than the one we’re looking at. We’ll see if that actually happens.

Here’s a picture of Smudgie playing with the toy his Aunt Amber gave him for Christmas:

This picture was taken just minutes after I gave it to him, but Smudgie has now chewed off both the eyeballs, two of the legs, and the tag.

And here's a goofy face!

Random Stories

This will be a blog full of random stories I’ve been collecting because they didn’t fit nicely into my other blogs, or I forgot about them. Enjoy!

While waiting in line at the grocery store one day, I notice that the old lady behind me has started to push up against me and is looking at all our groceries. She has a single bottle of soy sauce in her hand. I take advantage of the fact that she probably doesn’t understand English and say to Adam:

Sam: This lady is all up on my *ss!

Adam: I can see that. She’s giving me the craziest stink-eye I’ve ever seen.

Sam: I think she’s going to try to skip ahead of us with her one bottle of soy sauce.

Adam: Probably, let’s just see what happens.

So I’m like, all on the defensive ready to stand my ground, because stink-eye + pushing up against me = WTF? But when our turn comes up, Adam waves her ahead of us. And suddenly, she becomes the nicest old lady you’ve ever seen! The expression on her face said “Oh really? You’d do that for me? How sweet!” The stink-eye instantly turns into a mountain of smiles and xie xie’s. I’m glad we represented America well, but can’t help but feel we’ve been played.

Here is an interesting phone conversation between Adam and Cynthia Wei from Guilford Shanghai:

Cynthia: Hello Adam, someone told me you don’t like dragons.

Adam: What?

Cynthia: I’m putting together a presentation and because next year is the year of the dragon, I was going to do a dragon theme. But if you don’t like dragons, I don’t have to do that.

Adam: Cynthia, I have no problem with dragons at all.

Cynthia: Are you sure?

Adam: I like dragons very much. I don’t know who would tell you that.

Cynthia: Ok good.

During one of our tutoring sessions, I asked QunFang to teach us food names. So we’re making a list and I ask how to say “mushroom”. She says it, then spells it out for me “ce suo”. I looked at it and said “Wait a minute, that means toilet”. And she says “Yes, it also means toilet”. Then she says there’s another way to say it “wei sheng jian” which I’m now thinking is different word for mushroom. But then she says “It also means toilet”. So now I’m thinking, how can there be two words that mean both mushroom AND toilet? That’s just way too coincidental. So I go to Google Translate and write “mushroom” in the box. It comes out “Mogu” so I show it to her. And she goes “Ohhhhh MUSHroom, I thought you said ‘washroom’ ”. Haha.

Adam and I wanted to buy index cards to make flashcards out of but we couldn’t find any at the Carrefour. They had a whole school supply section, but no index cards. So we asked QunFang about them and we had a little difficulty explaining to her what they were. Finally she said she might be able to find some for us. She e-mailed us a couple days later and said she found some in a small shop and she didn’t think we’d be able to find it so she bought them for us. They’re not really index cards (no lines on them) but they’ll do just fine. They’re business card sized and they come in this awesome packaging:

Instead of having lines on one side, there’s a very subtle picture of people windsurfing engraved onto each one.

I found mangosteens at the Carrefour on Sunday so I grabbed three. You could tell they were out of season but I was too excited. But when I opened one up, it was mostly rotten inside.

But the part that wasn’t rotten tasted very good. So now I’m even more excited for summer.To end this blog, here are a few pictures of sleepy Smudgie:

Chinese Lessons and Fruit

We had our first official Chinese lesson this Wednesday with Ma Qun Fang. It was a surprise whether that was going to be a man or a woman because I don’t know anything about Chinese names. Even my co-workers couldn’t figure it out because some names are unisex. Also, the language coordinator told us the name was Fang Qun Ma, which it’s not. Anyways, SHE is a girl and when she arrived at our apartment, she brought a random friend with her. I think the friend was just for moral support because she didn’t do any teaching and Qun Fang said this was her first time talking to foreigners so she was a little nervous. :) Her English is ok. It’s good enough to learn Chinese from but there are a couple of people at work with better English so if we need clarification we’ll probably just ask them.

We learned the “alphabet” which is a list of the foundation sounds that Chinese words are made of. And then we learned some simple phrases. Qun Fang is so cute, whenever we say something right she goes “Oh yes.” And one time I must have said something perfectly because she gasped and said “You’re so lovely!” Haha. At the end, we showed her some coins we had that looked different and were lighter than normal coins because we didn’t know what they were worth so we couldn’t use them. She totally freaked out about them because some of them she’d never seen before. She said they were old, but a couple of them were from 2001 so China must have redone its money recently. Anyway, she left our apartment saying that she loves us so we must have entertained her quite a bit. :)

In other news, you won’t be hearing about Really anymore because she doesn’t work for Anhui Guilford anymore. We don’t know for sure, but we think she may have been fired. The week before BMW came to visit the plant, everyone was busy making sure the plant looked its best. And part of that was putting up professional-looking signs everywhere labeling the different departments. The signs were in Chinese and English and apparently Really did the translating for them and she spelled a lot of them wrong. It seems like a crazy reason to fire someone, but she left very suddenly and there was no farewell dinner and I’m pretty sure there would have been if this had been an amiable resignation.

FRUIT! I tried a couple of new fruits this week: jujubes and snakeskin fruit. Neither of them were very good. The jujubes are edible, though they taste like apple-flavored Styrofoam (not very juicy). The snakeskin fruit was just weird. I took one small bite and chucked the rest. I should also mention that when I bought it, the ladies working the weighing scale had to go check what the fruit code was for it. That just goes to show how infrequently these are bought. Now I know why.

Jujubes: cute name, mediocre taste

Looks like an armadilloTastes like crap

I’ve been obsessed with finding a mangosteen, though. But I think they’re out of season right now. I hear they speed up the metabolism, plus they look like cartoon fruit which is so intriguing! But alas, I have to wait for summer.

This isn’t a new fruit, but I thought I’d show you a picture of a dragon fruit. I like to slice them down the middle and use the rind as a bowl while I scoop out the innards!

Yum

Week 5 - Getting colder

The weather is starting to get cold here, and they usually don’t turn the heat on at work to save money. So my co-worker, Mandy, helped me order some E-warmers online! They’re gloves and slippers that hook up to your computer and keep your hands and feet warm! I got matching thug gangsta penguins:

The only problem is that you can’t leave your desk with them on. :) A string of UV beads came with them as a free gift. They turn colors when they detect UV rays, which is kinda neat. I think it’s funny that I’ve never heard of them until now. Obviously, Americans are not that concerned about UV rays.

Yesterday we discovered a new restaurant called Babela’s Kitchen. When we went inside, I felt like I was in an American restaurant. They greeted us in English, they had an English menu, and the décor was very modern (see below):

And the food was really good. They had hot chocolate! We’ll definitely be going back. Especially since ordering from KFC was getting to be annoying. We always ordered the same thing but ended up with slightly different food every time. We really need to learn the word for “combo”.

Also yesterday, I bought a weight scale at the Carrefour. It’s a nice digital one. I laughed as I looked at the box it came in. It said it can manage your weight, meals, and grease. I’m sure they meant “fat”.

But the word "grease" sure is motivating. Here’s a couple of pictures of Smudgie vegging in the back of his crate:

Bonus story about Smudgie:

He has an admirer. Two times this week a big fluffy white dog has come to visit Smudgie at our living room window. The dog belongs to someone around our complex. Both times I've gone outside with Smudgie to greet the dog since it was obviously someone's pet. And as soon as I get there, I see the owner coming down the sidewalk. I think the dog likes Smudgie so much, that whenever his owner opens the door, he runs out to come see him. At least the owner knows where to find him now! The white dog is very friendly, but I can't say the same for Smudgie. He needs to calm down. I hope they can be friends some day.

Out with Mr. Hong

Happy belated Thanksgiving, everyone! Adam and I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving here, partly because we were in two different cities and partly because even if they did sell turkeys at the grocery store (which they don't), we don't have an oven to cook a turkey in anyways. But I did learn that the word for turkey is "huoji" which literally means "fire chicken".


Tonight we went out with Mr. Hong, the project manager for the BMW localization, and Michael, a laboratory manager from the UK who is just here for a couple of weeks. Mr. Hong is the same age as Adam and he's very nice and funny. He wanted to take us to have REAL Huainan food but he told us not to tell the company because they would be mad at him for not taking us to a nicer place. Adam had told him we really liked the beef soup we had at this one place back in July, so Mr. Hong said he would take us to the place with the best beef soup in Huainan. Adam tried to get him to bring his girlfriend but Mr. Hong said she would be too shy. But apparently he's trying to marry this one. :)


Anyways, the "restaurant" was this little hole in the wall place. There are a ton of these places and without a Chinese guide, I would definitely have passed this one up thinking it was scary. But the beef soup was very good. I think the bread at the other place was better, though. After that we started walking to where Mr. Hong told us we needed to try some "milk tea". Tea with milk in it??? I wasn't excited about that but I'm all for walking around. When we got there, he ordered us chocolate flavored ones which I figured would taste the most normal. It wasn't bad, but there were these little gummy things floating around in the bottom called "glue balls". That's probably not a very good translation. They were flavorless but I didn't like them being in there so I tried to avoid them. Here's a picture:

I wish they had been chocolate chips

While we were there, Mr. Hong's girlfriend called and said she was going to meet us there. Surprise surprise! He's a short guy and so he said he was nervous that she might be taller than him. It was at this point that he confessed that this was the first time he was going to see her in person. We were like "What?! You haven't met her yet?" And then he told us how he "met" her. His phone has an app on it where you shake the phone, and then it tells you who else is shaking their phone at the same time as you. This girl whom he was claiming was his girlfriend, was just some random girl who happened to be shaking her phone at the same time as him and they had been conversing for a couple of days. Crazy. So I said to Adam "I thought you said he was trying to marry this girl." And he was like, "He is! Mr. Hong told me in China, you don't move out of your parents' house until you're married. So his parents are bugging him to get out!" Haha. So we got to be a small part of Mr. Hong's first date tonight (they are the same height). But we quickly decided to go home and leave them alone. Hope it went well!

That's all for now! To make up for the lack of exciting pictures from tonight's adventure, here's an extremely adorable picture of Smudgie:

Our little fire chicken

Cool Dog and Other Shops

I wanted to go on an adventure today so I Google mapped the city to try to find a pet store. One showed up across town called “KuGou” which means “Cool Dog” in Chinese. I figured we’d just go there, and maybe walk around the surrounding area a little bit and then go home. On the way there it looked like Sunday is the official “sell things on the sidewalk” day. But who knows, it might happen Saturday or all week too. This is a part of town we’ve never been to. I’d love to buy some sidewalk stuff, but I don’t know the bargaining jargon yet.

So we arrive at our destination and it’s a sad little pet shop. They had a strange assortment of dogs for sale: a scottie wearing a sweater, a couple of poodles, and a fully grown husky mix. They also had two very sick-looking kittens. We bought a bone for Smudgie out of pity and then left. As we walked, we saw several more pet shops that looked just like it but selling different dogs. We saw a white pomeranian, but it wasn’t as cute as Smudgie. There were chickens EVERYWHERE on the street. If they belonged to anyone, I don’t know how they can just leave them out on the street without having to corral them, but somehow the chickens know to stay put. I’m surprised I didn’t see any chicken road kill. Here are a couple pictures:

Then we stumbled upon this awesome market and decided to go inside. It went on forever, just streets and streets full of shops, many of them selling the same stuff. Clothes, candy, tea, random office supplies, and food were some of the things I can remember. Here are some pictures:

The entrance to the market

At this place you can have a blanket made on the spot

Laughing mannequin - who designed this???

Meat

In this maze, we decided to buy some type of flat bread with lots of sesame seeds on it as our mystery food item. We figured it still counts as “street food” but it’s probably not going to give us diarrhea (and it didn’t!). It was really good. I’m glad we went on this excursion. For the past three weeks, we’ve been limiting ourselves to work, home, and the Carrefour and surrounding shops. It’s good to remind ourselves that Huainan is a very big city and there are still plenty of surprises waiting for us.

Here’s a picture of Smudgie almost done with the bone we bought him:

Work Begins

I have officially begun work at Guilford Anhui! Apparently I don’t need a work permit since I’m only part time. They’ve given me the important-sounding title of “Design Supervisor” so that when I give my business card to customers, they will trust me. And I will be going on all the customer visits for design, because they want to flaunt me as much as possible. Haha. I’m not making that up either, that’s exactly what they told me.

I work half days, which is nice. And I get to bring Smudgie with me so he’s not in a crate all morning. We put him in a nice empty room with sunshine that hardly anyone ever goes into, and I give him a potty break mid morning. Everyone loves him! And I think once he gets used to his new surroundings and friends, he’ll love coming to work with me.

Look how fluffy I am!

It’s pretty fun working here. Their design software is kinda crappy but I think half the problem is having to draw with a mouse. So I’m going to bring my Wacom tablet with me tomorrow and try to install it on their computer. The main girl I work with, KeKe (pronounced “kuhkuh”) speaks very little English so when we don’t know what the other is saying, we use an online translator. The translations are pretty wonky sometimes but it’s funny. One time she told me she watched the movie Inception and then she tried to say “Leonardo” but she was pronouncing it really badly so it took me a while to understand. Another time, she typed something into the translator and it said “Taste the pine nut”. I was perplexed until I looked into her tin which was filled with what I thought were mints or candies. Turns out they were pine nuts. I’ve never had them before so I popped one in my mouth and commenced crunching it. I was like, “Wow this is REALLY crunchy” and no matter how long I chewed, I couldn’t break it down into swallowable pieces. Then she typed into the translator again “Shell” and said “Don’t eat”. Haha. So I spit it out and tried again with a new one, this time removing the shell first. Tasty!

Week 2 - Horray for Culture!

When I took Smudgie out for his morning business yesterday, I got to observe our neighbors killing chickens for the day’s lunch out on the lawn. They weren’t chopping the heads off, and since I got there in the middle of it, I didn’t see them actually kill them. All I saw were the chickens lying on the ground flapping their wings a little bit. After some research, I decided they probably snapped their necks because a chicken will still flap its wings for a bit (as a reflex, not because it’s still alive) after having its neck snapped. Horray for culture!

Adam has an important business meeting with BMW (the car company) this Monday and Tuesday in ChangChun, which is way up in Northeast China. Here’s a map for your convenience:



View Larger Map


This is an important meeting, so we went out to buy him a couple of suits yesterday afternoon. Holy crap, the suits here fit amazing. And they’re cheap. So we had an awesome time dressing him up. And the salespeople are so nice. I mean REALLY nice. Some places will serve you tea as you shop (mainly me, because I was always sitting there waiting for Adam while he tried on clothes). But this one place, they had one person that spoke decent English and she helped us out a lot. After we were done shopping for clothes, she said “What else do you need?” and I said, “Well, he needs a haircut”. And she asked her supervisor if it would be ok for her to leave the building and take us to the closest salon. Wow! Once we got to the salon, she arranged everything and then we exchanged phone numbers and she said “If you need anything, just call! I will go home and practice my English!” Haha. So sweet. Here’s picture of Adam getting his first Chinese haircut:

Almost all hairdressers here are guys. I’ve never gotten my hair cut by a guy and I’m sad that I’ll only get to have it done here probably once. Walking down the street, we saw a little kid (about 6 or 7 years old) peeing on the curb and nobody seemed to care. Horray for culture?

Our questionable food item this week was a snack. We got spiraly things, teddygram knock-offs, and puffed up star-shaped things. The star-shaped things tasted like chicken broth flavored styrofoam and the spiraly things were kind of bland but the teddygrams were good!




I had my first craving for food from back home and you’ll never guess what it was: canned tuna. Of course I miss cheeseburgers and pizza and all that other good stuff, but my first real craving was canned tuna. Why? Perhaps because it’s so simple. I would always keep my pantry stocked with tuna because it’s the perfect “I don’t know what else to eat” food item. I don’t have to cook it, just open the can and mix it with miracle whip. Maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough, but I don’t think they have canned food here. People seem to like making everything from scratch, which is evident by the killing of chickens on the front lawn. :)


P.S. I bought a Mountain Dew here and it tastes like Diet Mountain Dew. Fail....

Settling In

The past few days we have been getting used to our new surroundings and figuring out how to get around. We have a driver named Liu and he doesn’t speak any English. He takes Adam to work and back, and if I need to go somewhere during the day, I tell Adam and he tells Really to call Liu and tell him where I need to go. Eventually when I know enough Chinese, I’ll be able to call him myself. But for now, since there’s no way for him to know where and when to pick me up after I’m done shopping, he comes shopping with me. It’s very weird. I don’t like having someone watch me shop. I can only imagine what he’s thinking too. He’s very nice, though, and he at least pretends not to mind. :)

Our questionable food item of the week was a bust. We’re not sure what it was, but I think it was pig feet. Here’s a picture of the packaging:

And here’s a picture of it cooked:

It was basically all fat. There was a tiny sliver of meat that I ate, but thank goodness we had back-up dumplings or we would have gone hungry. Also, I’m disappointed by the abundance of American junk food available here. I was hoping there would be none and I would be forced to eat healthily. But now I’m going to have to use will power instead. One thing I did discover, happily, is the joy of cooking fresh broccoli. I’ve always bought frozen in America and I liked it, but I had no idea what I was missing by not buying raw. With a little bit of oil in a frying pan (not vegetable oil, but it’s got a picture of a fish on the jug so it must come from fish), the fresh broccoli tastes like heaven. And one head of broccoli costs about 50 cents USD. The broccoli farmers here must be very poor but I’m lovin’ it!

Adam and I went shopping for winter coats and long sleeved shirts this weekend. Guys’ clothes are very stylish here so it was easy to find good stuff for him. I was able to find a cute pea coat for me but shirts were a no-go. The below picture is a good example of what’s in stores right now for girls:

Not really my style. And it doesn’t help that the employees are all over you when you enter the store. And you always have to ask them for a bigger size. Even Adam, who is quite fit, needs to ask for a bigger size most of the time because Chinese people aren’t just skinny, their bone structure is also smaller than ours, generally. But speaking of skinniness, we’ve discovered how the Chinese stay in shape. On our way home from shopping, we walked by the sports complex that’s near our apartment and there were a ton of people outside in the square doing a simple choreographed dance in unison. I use the word “dance” loosely, because it was like a Chinese Macarena. I didn’t have my camera with me, dang it, but I found a picture online that demonstrates the number of people and the scale of the whole thing. It was pretty funny to watch.

Here’s a picture of Smudgie's darling face:

I was out walking him around our complex the other day and a security guard asked me what kind of dog he was and I understood him! I didn’t understand every single word, but I heard him say “shenme” (what) and “gou” (dog). I told him pomeranian and that was pretty much the end of the conversation. There’s probably a Chinese word for Pomeranian but I don’t know what it is.