My students love me

So I had this girl in class yesterday who, when I passed out a practice SAT test, decided she didn't want to take it and wanted to read instead. She sat there reading her huge book until I approached her and asked if she was finished with her practice exam. She looked at me, said no and that she wasn't interested and went back to reading her book! I didn't say anything to her, but when I got home, I sent an email to the office saying that she was rude and disrespectful in class. Today, she walked into my classroom before the bell rings, handed me a note and walked out. I was like... OOOK?

It's not everyday your students tell you you're a cute girl. HAHAH. Ooo China!

Jobs in China

      Yesterday I was on the bus taking my usual hour and a half trek to go get dinner, when I looked out the window and saw about three people standing in the middle of the road, wiping the metal highway divider with rags. Normally, this wouldn’t faze me, but I realized that most of you folks back home would actually find this unusual. So I’ve decided to actively try to pretend like it’s my first week in China, and report back all the “weird” things I see on a daily basis that I no longer find weird and have been desensitized to.

       So going back to the people wiping the metal highway divider, it is not unusual in China to see many people doing what appear to be unnecessary tasks. Wiping the highway divider is one. Having five attendants stationed at each aisle in a grocery store is another. Sweeping the sidewalks everyday is one more! I’ve never actually seen this as it probably happens late at night, but I’m pretty sure that there are people assigned to sweep up after a night markets so they can set up the next night and trash the streets again. For those of you that don’t know, all remnants of food and garbage are thrown on the street at night markets. Apparently using the garbage cans is too hard. Either way, labor in China is cheap. So cheap that a restaurant will have someone whose only job is to open the door for the patrons. As such, you will find the Chinese doing the most ridiculous jobs all over the place. With 1.3 billion people in China, the government has to sometimes find creative ways for all of them to have work.

 

This is a woman "sweeping" the floor. Only odd thing is that she is using wet sand and pushing it around with her broom. I mean it seems to do a good job. But really? Wet sand?

Shopping in China

      When you go to another place, whether it be the next town over, the next state over, the next country over, or even as far the other side of the world, odds are your desire to shop will follow you there. So it will be no surprise to you when I tell you that I’ve gone shopping here in China! :O

      So you enter a store. Let’s just say out of simplicity that the store is called Vero Moda (love this store!). Immediately upon entering, one or two of the eight sales people (remember the store is probably as big as two of your living rooms) attach themselves to you. They stand pretty much half a foot away behind you and they follow you as you walk through the store browsing. If you touch something, they will immediately come closer and start saying random stuff in Chinese (because I obviously understand that ) probably telling you how amazing said item is. This continues until you leave the store all claustrophobic and feeling like a burglar.

      One time I stopped and looked at the sales people while doing the “no” hand motion and the “shoo don’t bother me motion” to no success. I even once tried the “sit” “stay” while I slowly walk away commands like I would to a dog, but that still did not work.

      Needless to say, I guess shopping in China is a communal experience (just like everything else) and you are meant to share it in a close and personal way with every sales person in every store that you decide to shop in. Unfortunately, I was not a fan of this type of shopping experience since I hate being followed and made to feel like I’m being watched because I might steal something. As such, I probably won’t be procuring many things while here in China. L

Subway- eat fresh

Our lovely town, ZZ, of 8 million people does not have a subway. However, Xi'an which is a huge tourist destination does! Having heard that the food near the warriors was bad, we decided to pick up some sandwiches to go. Walking up to the Subway, I wanted to capture this joyous moment on film so I proceeded to ask three separate people to take a picture of us. All three of these people completely ignored us and continued walking. In fact, none of them even remotely slowed down to acknowledge us. Now I know what it feels like to be invisible.

But we didn't let that ruin our fun. Brandon happily took our photo but he is dearly missed from the documentation of the awesomeness that is Subway.

How to procure a couch in China

As I sit on my lovely, albeit not as soft as desired, newly procured couch, I recall the occurrences of my last two days.

Said couch

One would normally think that buying a couch would be relatively simple. I mean if you wanted a lightly used cheap one, you could look on craigslist or drive around town in your car scavengering the alleys. Or if you wanted a new one you could choose one of the many furniture stores around such as Value Shitty Furniture, uummm I mean Value City Furniture (hehe) or go higher end with Luxury Furniture and Lighting (Really ppl? Selling luxury furniture and that's the best name you can come up with?!). You're couch shopping experience would consist of going to the store, telling the sales person what you want, giving your address and then coughing up an arm and a leg or just a few bucks, depends on which store you went to of course, and then sitting around Indian style on your floor waiting for the thing to be delivered. And that would be it. A child could do it!

Can you spot our couch?

However, my experience was slightly different. The day started with my mother and I heading out to the whole sale fabric store. Seems like a logical start to my couch story, right? Well the fabric store did not have our desired fabric, lace, so we just for kicks walked up this escalator that hasn't been used for years to the second story, still holding on to our hopes for Chinese lace. Well, no dice on the lace, however, we did stumble upon a whole room full of furniture! Do the Chinese mean to hide such goods from us Laowais or is this really where a furniture store should be located according their ultra logical thinking?

Either way, after making a quick loop around, we found our victim; the loudest, smallest couch in the entire room that wasn't a ridiculous price. And now the fun begins. We got the price relatively easily but the delivery aspect was going to take a bit longer.

Since arriving in China, I have taken to carrying around a little red notebook in my purse to write down menu items that we like to eat in Hansi, pinyin and our own little description. So I take out my little book and start very kindergarden-ly drawing a picture of a couch and a house and then an arrow connecting the two with a question mark (can anyone guess what I'm asking with my drawing!!??). The Chinese lady who owned the couch was not having it or even attempting to understand me. Frustrated, we were about to walk away, when I remembered I have a very useful and awesome friend who speaks both English and Chinese, AND is only a phone call away (Alexix I love you!). Well I don't want to bore you but let me tell you what went down in these phone calls (there were three of them!). I would call Alexis and tell her my situation, she would them tell her coworker (who is a Chinese native), who would them talk to the shop lady. After that, the coworker would tell Alexis and Alexis would tell me. It's was a real life version of telephone! Well after three such phone calls we went from having to go down stairs and find our own guy to deliver the couch, to having the shop lady deliver the couch to us for free by the next day before10:30am. I was not part of the conversation so I have no idea how this change came to be, but I was too happy to care! I had just gotten a couch and somehow managed to get free delivery! This is what Charlie Sheen would call "winning". :)

Priceless

So the next day, at 10:30 on the button, my phone rings and I pick up my phone to hear the shop lady (I recognized her voice) screaming, well that's what it sounded like, at me in Chinese (doesn't she know by now I don't speak Chinese?). After saying yes and thank you over and over to her in Chinese, I just hung up the phone. I mean I obviously have no idea what she is saying! Brandon, Mom, and I ran down stairs and are looking around for a delivery truck to no avail. We're standing there looking and looking and then all of a sudden my Mom points to the left... And there is a little old lady with the biggest grin on her face on her adult tricycle pulling our couch. *Dramatic Pause* The Chinese deliver furniture on tricycles! Priceless moment. Oh, I also want to point out that the store was 10km away! That's not particularly a short distance via tricycle. Additionally, I am sad to report I did not have my camera on me since I had been distracted by the Chinese yelling on the phone, but I found this picture instead. It's pretty representative of what went on with our little old lady and her tricycle.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I got a couch in China.


Summary for those who don't want to read the whole post:
1. Go somewhere where no one in their right mind would expect to find a couch
2. Don't bother drawing pictures, they can't read those here
3. Always have a bilingual friend at your finger tips
4. If they say they don't deliver, just keep asking the same question in as many different ways as you can come up with until you get what you want (free delivery duh!)
5. Pay for your couch and go home to wait for it
6. Go pick up your couch from the old lady delivering your couch via tricycle.

Ode to Peanut Butter

I was sitting on my five hours high speed train listening to some Elton John, when a lovely thought floated into my head: peanut butter.  I don’t know where it came from or who (what country) can take credit for inventing it, but I know that the US has it and that we’re not particularly secretive about it. So as I sat on my train that was flying at about 197km/hr, I came to wonder how such a large portion of the world, including China, has not yet discovered its amazingness. If you think about it, our dear good old peanutbutter is good on veggies and fruits; it’s good on bread and on fingers (don’t deny it, you’ve done it); it’s good off a spoon; it’s good for breakfast and lunch (who didn’t eat a pb&j sandwich 4/5 days a week in junior high?) and of course dinner: who doesn’t spoil themselves with a peanut butter brownie sundae or peanut butter m&ms every once in a while?

Now I’m not calling the US superior to any country out there, but seriously?! How is everyone else on the planet so not into peanut butter? I honestly don’t think I’ll ever grasp that concept.

Anyways, for all of you in the US: enjoy your peanut butter lest it be taken away from you some day. And as for us in the land of no peanut butter, aka China; I hope we have friends who love us enough to perhaps share a bit via snail mail :D

Note: as of writing this post, I have since discovered peanut butter at Walmart! Talk about a twofer!

Our modest accommodations - Hangzhou

Thank you so much, Jim for getting us this fabulous room! We really appreciate it! :)

It's also the last soft bed I've slept in since.

Girl Talk

I experienced today what can only be described as a girl’s heaven and I can already tell you that I will not be able to explain the awesomeness that went down. We went to this no name mall somewhere in Beijing (don’t worry, I have a business card so I can return again!). Apparently, JinLan told me it has the best prices in all of China! It’s an unimpressive building that’s about five stories high and nothing special marking it. Inside, it’s not like a mall in the US where there is tons of open space for strolling and people watching. Instead, each floor is categorized according to item (jewelry, purses, clothes, etc) and it’s one seller after another packed right on top of each other. It’s kinda like souk in Morocco but cleaner and more organized and much much better quality things!

I wish I would have taken more pictures but it was such a chaotic mess inside that I totally forgot. In this building they have everything you could possibly imagine! They have shoes (I saw Uggs that I will be buying next time I go here!), and purses like you wouldn’t imagine (got me a real nice (fake) leather Chloe bag), clothes (beautifully loooong flowy colorful maxis and so much other stuff that my eyes couldn’t absorb it all), perfumes, electronics, watches, luggage, jewelry (I got a beautiful crystal ring!) and much much more. Yes, I realize that is a list of everything a normal mall sells, but it was in such a compact space, and the prices were so obscenely low. It was such a chaotic mess with all the sales people talking to you and pressuring you, all at the same time. Everywhere I looked there was more to see and more people asking you to buy their stuff (they really push their Louis Vuitton) . It felt like Andi always says: a birthday party where 100 of your friends show up so that you’re floating around trying to say hi to everyone and spend time with everyone but there are so many of them and only one of you and the moment you say hi to one person, another one shows up. My senses were on over load and I can’t believe I only bought as much as I did. That place is dangerous but so omg amazing! Shopping heaven! And for the record, everyone that said I won’t find clothes and shoes, was totally wrong. I found more than enough of anything and everything I would ever need! I know I did a bad job of explaining the mall but it was just wow! I wish everyone could experience it! Such a rush really!

That is all I have to say about that. I promise I will take more pictures of the mall next time I go, but I still don’t even think that would do it justice. It’s more of an experience than anything else. I’m still 
riding the high of the chaos!


Here is a pic of some other market but its very similar!

A little bit of home (kinda) in a foreign land

So this little birdy told me that China has been getting in the habit of making western town replicas. "China is reportedly building a replica of the Austrian town of Hallstatt, complete with winding roads and a lake." I could not be more excited! link to article

Now I know that when I start missing my western life/scenery, I can take a mini hiatus and for this, I am thankful.

New Passport

I got my new passport! It's maroon (the color of the EU) and it doesn't look like a fake! My picture is actually printed on a plastic page instead of paper. Pretty snazzy! Only problem with it is that it's completely blank. Hmmm I wonder how I can change that....? :)