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:



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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....