Day two with London
All right all, I’m very sorry for the delay in posting. If you only wanted words I’d be golden but those darn pictures are so hard to load from Changsha. I’m sure it’s probably just because it’s free. For 160 Yuan a day in Beijing, I better have been able to post stuff quickly.
Well today was somewhat of a relaxer day if you can really have one with a new toddler that woke up for the first time in a crib different than she’s ever known. She slept through the night like a trooper. Well at least I think so. I SPLEPT through the whole night without her waking me up, so if she needed me, she didn’t make enough noise!
Now all of you parents freaking out, my wife said she listened for a peep and she didn’t have one. Christe was up every two hours just checking, so get of my back.
As for the goings on of the day, they were fairly, short. We were doing our best to keep London on her schedule. The orphanage gave us her schedule showing her feeding times and preferences of food and sleep. It was all in Chinese so who knows what. With my limited Chinese I told Christe it said she sleeps from 10am until 4:30 pm then she wakes up and orders pizza. She like pepporoni and pineapple. She then listens to loud music, bathes herself and then goes out on the town to cruise for older kids with tattoos.
My wife didn’t buy it, so she asked our cordinatior who came up with some schedule that involved steamed eggs (pronounced: egg-er, steam-uh egg-er) on Tuesday and Saturday. I told my wife I didn’t believe her. I said she just making stuff up because she doesn’t want us to know the truth but Christe sided with her so we were back to our room by 8pm to put her to bed.
During the day however we ventured out to a local ‘super-center’. This store named “Apollo” and is connected to the “Friendship” store. It is very different from the Carefour in Beijing. Here they have 6 floors of all kinds of goods. Smaller square footage on each floor and more specialized sections.
The have brands like Playboy (with the bunny logo and all –go heff–) and FreeBird (go figure) but no Adidas, Nike, etc. They’ve got people demonstrating clothes steamers, make-up, and automatic bubble blowers. You have to walk by these folks on the way to the 5th floor for the grocery.
The grocery is the only place they don’t use this ‘government’ system of purchasing. From what I can gather (and I’ve seen it everywhere in Chansha), a sales person is allotted his or her (mostly her) 4 square feet of product and they just point at it as if to say, “You want this”, “You know you want this” and you walk by and the smiles stop. Now when you find something you want (and you’ve told them “I don’t want any more” in Chinese and they keep handing you boy colors of the one pink item you’ve found) they write some Chinese on a form. This form is in triplicate. Then they hold your item(s)and you walk to the center of the floor to pay the cashier, who is obviously, more tenured and clearly less enthusiastic about dealing with some ‘da-bee-dzur’ than the goofy 12 year-olds pedaling the ‘friendship items’. Now that you have paid, and the cashier stamps the form in triplicate with two different stamps (manufactured in the 1950’s, I’m sure), she then keys the item number(s) into a blue and white-screened computer (manufactured in the 1970’s) Then she hands you a computer receipt and the blue and white copies of the form. Then you walk back to the girl and she takes the computer receipt and then the yellow copy and you get your items. One final point to keep in mind, do not feel as if you’ve been taken when you get to step away from her and she runs straight to the cashier, hands in her paperwork, get some money and runs back to her station giggling the whole way.
I’m mean let’s face it. You just bought 5 pairs of leather baby shoes for $17 US. Let her giggle her ass off, even Wal-Mart can’t beat that. One other thing before I forget, the store has everything under-the-sun (sans deodorant – I checked! –) but it can’t seem to find shoes to fit the big American looking mannequins. I swear on all that I have, there is one mannequin near the escalator that some bored Chinese worker has spent hours making blue shoes for out of tape. They’re little Mary Jane looking things. I told Christe I have to go back just to take a picture. Nothing like a little pair of blue tape shoes to sell that hot little pink dress, huh guys?
Now for the grocery……
They have pretty much everything you need. They even have mint oreo’s for a $1.60 US, that’s cheap! Now being from Kansas City, I love me some smoked meat. This market takes it to the extreme. If it’s not made of ramen, it gets smoked. And I mean, smoked to point of it becoming jerky. I told Christe I was going to shoot a picture and she couldn’t even get to the area because of the smell.
Everyone I’ve known that has gone to China has said, you cannot explain the ‘smell’. You’ll just never forget when you leave. I say hogwash! I like the smell and I don’t notice anything different. As for the smoked food section, I took pictures from a way back. Not to mention that I was being stared at by what I believe was the chief smoker.
We grabbed a few sodas and three jugs of bottled water and it was back to the hotel, via a 10+ minute walk through a traffic intersection not meant for the faint-of-heart.
Then it was back to the hotel for a birthday gathering on the 40th floor for all the girls. One of the girls was having her actual birthday, as well. We came to find out that little girl had been at the hospital until 3.30 am. She had a temp come on without warning. She had to get an I.V. and she would have to have 2 more by Wednesday. Poor girl. We have been lucky that London’s sneezes and coughs have escalated.
Then we went to dinner at the hotel buffet again (yes, the same thing happened with the ribs). We fed everyone and went back to the room.
As for some tips on China, I’m going to be a little more finite today……………
Three tips on Heineken in China…..
One. If you’re going to run out and buy a six-pack of Heineken in Changsha, be prepared to pay almost $20 US.
Two. If you get back to your room and you realize there is no bottle opener and you know a nifty trick to pry the cap off and you try to use your daughters hair brush as your pry bar, prepare to have your wife RIP YOUR HEAD OFF!
Three. And when you finally get to top off with something used to hold menus on the desk be prepared to be annoyed when you find out that the beer is 4.7%. Let’s just assume that the ‘government’ doesn’t want any drunkenness taking place and that it’s not the convenience store man trying to stick me with the light stuff.
Lastly, I’ve included a few more pictures of London. Of note, she like broccoli, and she did not get the part in the local play of the last samurai.
Tomorrow we’re supposed to go to the Changsha embroidery factory.
Signing off from China, this is ‘Big Nose’.
Well today was somewhat of a relaxer day if you can really have one with a new toddler that woke up for the first time in a crib different than she’s ever known. She slept through the night like a trooper. Well at least I think so. I SPLEPT through the whole night without her waking me up, so if she needed me, she didn’t make enough noise!
Now all of you parents freaking out, my wife said she listened for a peep and she didn’t have one. Christe was up every two hours just checking, so get of my back.
As for the goings on of the day, they were fairly, short. We were doing our best to keep London on her schedule. The orphanage gave us her schedule showing her feeding times and preferences of food and sleep. It was all in Chinese so who knows what. With my limited Chinese I told Christe it said she sleeps from 10am until 4:30 pm then she wakes up and orders pizza. She like pepporoni and pineapple. She then listens to loud music, bathes herself and then goes out on the town to cruise for older kids with tattoos.
My wife didn’t buy it, so she asked our cordinatior who came up with some schedule that involved steamed eggs (pronounced: egg-er, steam-uh egg-er) on Tuesday and Saturday. I told my wife I didn’t believe her. I said she just making stuff up because she doesn’t want us to know the truth but Christe sided with her so we were back to our room by 8pm to put her to bed.
During the day however we ventured out to a local ‘super-center’. This store named “Apollo” and is connected to the “Friendship” store. It is very different from the Carefour in Beijing. Here they have 6 floors of all kinds of goods. Smaller square footage on each floor and more specialized sections.
The have brands like Playboy (with the bunny logo and all –go heff–) and FreeBird (go figure) but no Adidas, Nike, etc. They’ve got people demonstrating clothes steamers, make-up, and automatic bubble blowers. You have to walk by these folks on the way to the 5th floor for the grocery.
The grocery is the only place they don’t use this ‘government’ system of purchasing. From what I can gather (and I’ve seen it everywhere in Chansha), a sales person is allotted his or her (mostly her) 4 square feet of product and they just point at it as if to say, “You want this”, “You know you want this” and you walk by and the smiles stop. Now when you find something you want (and you’ve told them “I don’t want any more” in Chinese and they keep handing you boy colors of the one pink item you’ve found) they write some Chinese on a form. This form is in triplicate. Then they hold your item(s)and you walk to the center of the floor to pay the cashier, who is obviously, more tenured and clearly less enthusiastic about dealing with some ‘da-bee-dzur’ than the goofy 12 year-olds pedaling the ‘friendship items’. Now that you have paid, and the cashier stamps the form in triplicate with two different stamps (manufactured in the 1950’s, I’m sure), she then keys the item number(s) into a blue and white-screened computer (manufactured in the 1970’s) Then she hands you a computer receipt and the blue and white copies of the form. Then you walk back to the girl and she takes the computer receipt and then the yellow copy and you get your items. One final point to keep in mind, do not feel as if you’ve been taken when you get to step away from her and she runs straight to the cashier, hands in her paperwork, get some money and runs back to her station giggling the whole way.
I’m mean let’s face it. You just bought 5 pairs of leather baby shoes for $17 US. Let her giggle her ass off, even Wal-Mart can’t beat that. One other thing before I forget, the store has everything under-the-sun (sans deodorant – I checked! –) but it can’t seem to find shoes to fit the big American looking mannequins. I swear on all that I have, there is one mannequin near the escalator that some bored Chinese worker has spent hours making blue shoes for out of tape. They’re little Mary Jane looking things. I told Christe I have to go back just to take a picture. Nothing like a little pair of blue tape shoes to sell that hot little pink dress, huh guys?
Now for the grocery……
They have pretty much everything you need. They even have mint oreo’s for a $1.60 US, that’s cheap! Now being from Kansas City, I love me some smoked meat. This market takes it to the extreme. If it’s not made of ramen, it gets smoked. And I mean, smoked to point of it becoming jerky. I told Christe I was going to shoot a picture and she couldn’t even get to the area because of the smell.
Everyone I’ve known that has gone to China has said, you cannot explain the ‘smell’. You’ll just never forget when you leave. I say hogwash! I like the smell and I don’t notice anything different. As for the smoked food section, I took pictures from a way back. Not to mention that I was being stared at by what I believe was the chief smoker.
We grabbed a few sodas and three jugs of bottled water and it was back to the hotel, via a 10+ minute walk through a traffic intersection not meant for the faint-of-heart.
Then it was back to the hotel for a birthday gathering on the 40th floor for all the girls. One of the girls was having her actual birthday, as well. We came to find out that little girl had been at the hospital until 3.30 am. She had a temp come on without warning. She had to get an I.V. and she would have to have 2 more by Wednesday. Poor girl. We have been lucky that London’s sneezes and coughs have escalated.
Then we went to dinner at the hotel buffet again (yes, the same thing happened with the ribs). We fed everyone and went back to the room.
As for some tips on China, I’m going to be a little more finite today……………
Three tips on Heineken in China…..
One. If you’re going to run out and buy a six-pack of Heineken in Changsha, be prepared to pay almost $20 US.
Two. If you get back to your room and you realize there is no bottle opener and you know a nifty trick to pry the cap off and you try to use your daughters hair brush as your pry bar, prepare to have your wife RIP YOUR HEAD OFF!
Three. And when you finally get to top off with something used to hold menus on the desk be prepared to be annoyed when you find out that the beer is 4.7%. Let’s just assume that the ‘government’ doesn’t want any drunkenness taking place and that it’s not the convenience store man trying to stick me with the light stuff.
Lastly, I’ve included a few more pictures of London. Of note, she like broccoli, and she did not get the part in the local play of the last samurai.
Tomorrow we’re supposed to go to the Changsha embroidery factory.
Signing off from China, this is ‘Big Nose’.
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