We slept in first of all. We are still dealing with the jetlag a little bit. And we have been very busy keeping ourselves going. About 11:30 we headed to the market to get some things. I was trying to find a 12 inch, or so, mirror to help with my getting ready in the morning. Because this is what I am currently using.
I have a larger one in both of the bathrooms, but due to the “inconveniences” of China, there are no outlets in the bathrooms. Yup. Wonderful. So I have to do my hair in the office, where there is an outlet, but no mirror. The closest outlet to the bathroom is by my bedside. We are thinking about using an extension cord. Now we need to find one. Hehe.
We did not find one at Rainbow (our closest market) so we decided to head to Trust Mart. Guess who runs Trust Mart? That’s right, our good friend Walmart. It doesn’t feel as cheap or depressing as Walmart though. The real Walmart here does and I’ll share that experience another time when I feel brave enough to go there and take pictures. It’s scary. Yikes.
Anyway, no mirror there either. But we did have success with some of the other things we were looking for. alarm clock, lamp for the nightstand, wall clock, and then the other things we needed. Here they charge you for grocery bags so we took our huge bag from Metro. (I’ll get a picture of that thing full one of these days). It’s not a good idea to fill it. Because then it’s heavy. Unfortunately we got carried away and got a few too many beverages. About 7 liters of water, juice and sprite. Oops. Plus everything else. Oh, and the 1 gallon of pure distilled water for Daniel’s C-PAP machine. So then we struggled home with all that weight. Walking. It’s not too far but when you have that much liquid in your shopping bag, it gets heavy quickly.
We had to cool down after that physical exertion.
At 1:30 we met Selena, Daniel’s assistant at work. She was spent the afternoon with us and then we went to dinner with her at some friend’s house with her.
We went to Pearl Island. She didn’t know what we meant. They know it here as Gulangyu. She had only been once before, when she was 18, for high school graduation. So we ended up being the tour guides to her. We bought the things we went there for and then wandered the island for a bit. We asked her if she wanted a treat and she didn’t know that word. She is very good with her English. She is in the 4th level English class at work. She is also pretty easy to understand, as her pronunciation is good. Some people here have such bad accents they might as well be speaking Chinese instead of English.
So we explained what a treat was and we got her an ice cream cone at McDonalds, while we got lunch there. Yes, we keep eating out at bad American fast food joints, but at Pizza Hut we got salads and pasta. You’d eat that too if you saw our options right now. Still not brave enough to cook our own food yet. That will be next week after we get back from our Visa trip to Hong Kong.
Next we wanted to get some DVD’s. Let me tell you about how you get DVD’s here. They are black market. No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. And the places we go look pretty seedy too. I’ll get a picture show you next time we go. Selena thought we were going legit on this one. So that surprised her. Then when we got so many (about 430 ¥ worth) she kept asking us why we were buying them when we could watch them for free on the internet. She kept getting kind of nervous about the money we were spending. She is very careful with her money, as we should be. But the amount of money we make in comparison to what she makes is amazing. We are definitely among the wealthy here. She also kept wanting to take the bus instead of a taxi. The buses here are all just about broken down and I’m not ready to have that adventure yet. I hope we didn’t tarnish ourselves in her opinion.
Then she helped us at a place where Daniel could get his XBOX cord fixed. Like the dork he sometimes acts like, he plugged it in without an adapter. He knew better, but wanted to try it anyway. Dork. So now it’s getting fixed for 50He knew better, but wanted to try it anyway. Dork. So now it’s getting fixed for 50¥ and I get to go pick it up by myself tomorrow. Lovely.
Then we went to her friend Amy’s house where we tasted Pi Pa (loquat in english) – an amazingly yummy fruit that only grows in Southeast Asia. It’s in the apple family. I’ll document that sometime too. Funny thing about it is when you eat enough of it, it begins to have a mild sedative effect. It’s awesome.
Then we went upstairs to Amy’s mother’s apartment where dinner was waiting. She had 8 different dishes –
(clockwise from top left)
• tripe – not too bad, not as chewy as I’ve heard it can be,
• soup – with bamboo shoots and duck,
• prawn – with head and legs still attached,
• chicken wings – very yummy, but not like at home,
• a cold cucumber dish that was good,
• pig feet – which the meat part tasted very good and the skin looked about as appetizing as toe lint, (the Chinese love the fatty parts of meat),
• fish – it was good, but I’m not sure what the spices were, (the whole fish)
• leafy greens – tastes like spinach, which we like,
all served with rice. We tried everything. I really did love the meat from the pig feet, but I could not handle the bones or the skin. It looked gross. I’m sure you can imagine. I don’t like the fatty stuff. The prawn were good once you took the head, feet, and legs off. It’s a little disheartening when your food is looking back at you until you break its head off.
My only complaint about the food is that they cook with a lot of oil. I mean A LOT of oil. But the flavor of the “real” Fujian Chinese food is very good. She had made a hot chili sauce that was delicious. So much so in fact that Daniel commented on it a few times and used on most of his food. Then Amy’s mother gave us leftovers because we liked it so much. She said to call if want more sauce and she will make it for us. She also gave us lots of extra tripe – but I’m not stoked about that one. We are going to feed it to Daniel’s dad tomorrow night when he comes for dinner.
Then we saw the wedding pictures and video of Amy and her husband, who have only been married about a month. Oh. My. Gosh. If you think weddings in America are expensive and a big deal, they are NOTHING compared to what this was. Her pictures were amazing. She had 6 custom dresses made for pictures, including her wedding dress. Wow. The food, the cost, the photos was all beyond what I had imagined.
This post has gotten pretty long, so I will wait till another time to tell you about Fujian Chinese weddings. I really hope one of the office girls gets married while we are here so that we can attend a Chinese wedding!
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