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.