Current location:	Beijing, China
Current mood:	anxious
Current music:	None
Entry tags:	bad timing, chinese culture, chinese food, confusion, sex stores

China day 003
Sunday was again filled with being lazy. We slept through dinner and the night for the most part again, then got up at five in the morning. This time zone difference and nothing to do kinda sucks. When we did wake up, we went to breakfast at the hotel where we had time to go through several new vocab words. Canjin (餐巾)= napkin, chengzi (橙子)= orange, guozhi (果汁)= juice, boli bei (玻璃杯)= drinking glass, li (Due to Microsoft's stupidity, there is no character available for this.) = pear, miantiao (面条) = noodle, hongcha (Once again, Microsoft proves its stupidity) = black tea, and wan (Microsoft is stupid...) = bowl.
As a side note, as I'm trying to put in the Chinese characters for the words for later reference, Microsoft has decided to stop allowing the language capabilities work. I hate Microsoft. Hate.
We went for a walk to the west this time. We saw yet more clothing shops, more hotels, a map in English, and one sex shop which disturbed me because of the odd plushes in them. No, they were not really sexually oriented, but there is something odd about a dildo next to a large plush with no definite shape to it. It does catch one's eye. There was very little to note in this direction. It was rather boring. The only thing that really kept our attention for long was the map since it was in English, so we were trying to figure out where we were at.
I also saw my first homeless man in China. He waved to me both times I've seen him. This makes me curious about what sort of system they may have in place for the homeless. I have also seen a lot of people going through the trash to find recyclables. I guess there is also a sell back service here in China. Good to know in case we need extra money. Now, just to figure out how to utilise it. I think we have been seeing the residential area of Beijing as what seems to be run down little huts behind store fronts. I wonder what sort of living situation the people here have. They all seem so very happy, so I want to know how they live. I want to try it too! =)
I have also noticed that about 4/5 of the women love to wear high heeled boots. OUCH! How? Plus, many of them are so thin that you'd be able to shove them into the cracks of the building, with room for a couple more. Not to say they are all stick thin since I've seen several bigger people too. I've not seen any obese people yet. I can't see how that happens since the food is so damned good. I would have thought more people would weigh more due to the food alone. Yum..... meat-on-a-stick....
We did go back to the large supermarket with the meat on the stick. This time we noted the basement area. It was a huge supermarket with lots of variety. We found pre-made mantou, which is a steamed bun. We also found a bread-pastry thing that had green onions mixed into it. That is what I had for lunch. Fred had “squid-on-a-stick”, which was delicious. Oh, and these mysterious cookie things. I have no idea what they may be, but they were pretty good too. There is also many forms of noodles. Why does one need over twenty varieties of noodles? What are they all used for? I want to know so I can try them all. Go for Insta-Drinks! Rachel would love this place. Granted, she'd wander around just as wide-eyed as me thinking, “What can I try, and how to do I eat it?” The market even had housewares such as plates, bowls (wan), chopsticks (kuaizi), and batteries. Oh, and these really bizarre looking humidifiers made of different animals. I want the pig like looking one.
As we were leaving the market, I nearly kicked a kid in the head. I didn't see him at first, but it was hard to miss. He was peeing on the step. Granted, he was under the age of six, but his mother was encouraging him to pee outside. Although, she was trying to convince him to step out of the way of people first, but the kid obviously didn't care. The mother's response to us seeing this was to laugh like it was the most natural and funny thing in the world. I smiled, but more out of confusion since there are public toilets everywhere. Seriously, there are sometimes four in one city block, and at least two sets of male and female bathrooms. That, and it was cold. How could anyone want to just drop their draws in that weather?
We came back because it was freezing outside, and not very much fun to walk around. It is hard to just saunter and window shop when you have to walk quickly to keep your legs from freezing. When we did, Fred started to give me a foot massage due to my left foot being problematic. Low! That would be when house keeping would decide to clean the room, not in the two and a half hours we were actually gone. >_>
The rest of the evening was a blur. There was some getting things prepared for teaching, a phone call from XuQian, our contact at the school, and sleeping. Lots of sleeping. I can't wait to get to Baoding where we'll be able to call it home for long enough to actually find reasons to do things. Hopefully we won't have to have the convection cell running all the time to keep cigarette smoke out of the apartment so we can breathe. It creates too much heat here, so it makes us sleepy. However, we can't breathe without it.
The day that I'm actually writing this is Monday. Today, we get to go home. Yes, to our home in Baoding. Hooray! However, I'm not sure when the next time I'll be able to do anything online will be. We'll be keeping a daily log of things, but as for actually posting them, I have no idea what is going on. Hell, I don't even know what my address will be. Gotta love that.