July 16-31, 2010

July 16 - 31
First thing's first!
I am so happy that Dan and Tom were able to come to China and that I was able to meet up with them in Shanghai for a day. I arrived at their hotel around 10:15am where we unsuccessfully tried to find a western breakfast for me. We decided we might have more luck downtown. I ended up getting distracted by wanting a Starbucks. Then we wandered over to the mall that had a ton of fake purses and watches. By the end of the day I had two purses; a Louis Vuitton and a Coach, and two watches; a Rolex and a RADO, which I've never heard of but it looks really nice. ^_^ We met up with the rest of their tour group for dinner and a river boat tour. I had a ton of fun and really enjoyed their company. My trip home was a bit of a gong show and ended up costing me another plane ticket, but I made it back in one piece and relatively unscathed.

Secondly: I have been meaning to add this for a while now but kept forgetting. Thank you Elysse for your brilliant advice to make toast.
Elysse suggested (since I can't find toasters here) to just put the bread right into a frying pan and toast it that way. This should have been a logical step to take but for whatever reason I just hadn't thought about it. Either way, I am enjoying toast more often now all thanks to Elysse. ^_^ so thanks again Elysse, it's working really well!

As I mentioned in my last blog the weather here is hot and rainy. There was one particular day that I was going grocery shopping with Anna and Adam, it was raining almost the entire time. When we finished Adam thought it would be a good idea to get a foot massage and I didn't disagree. On our way to drop his groceries off and head to the massage place we saw lots of streets that had been flooded. If it wasn't for us being in a tricycle taxi we would have been wading through water that was past our knees. I couldn't believe how much water there was; it had traffic stopped and streets backed up all over the city. I guess there was lots of flooding all over the province because of the rains, but I still had a hard time believing I had just witnessed a flood; a fairly small one mind you but still; it was interesting to say the least. Actually it kind of reminded me of home during the winters. There'll be a huge blizzard that will block everyone in and the next day a chinook will role through and melt it all. Well here, it will pour rain and the streets will flood and by the next day the sun will have everything as dry as if it had never rained. Granted, it will be very muggy the next day.

We all have had some sort of encounter with those homeless guys on the side of the road who wash your windows or have those funny signs. Well I saw a guy the other day who had a sign around his neck, a camouflage cowboy hat, holding a feather duster. I don't know what the sign said though since it was in Chinese. Either way, I thought, well maybe he's a little loopy or something. Then my bus stopped at a red light and I see this guy walking into traffic dusting peoples windshields and collecting change. How strange to dust someone's windows, but then I started thinking about it; you don't have to cary heavy buckets of water around, you don't have to worry about scratching the windows and Wenzhou is a very dusty city; so ya I guess it does sort of make sense. Ha ha ha. But still seems weird.

School is same old same old. The kids love me; I have them totally fooled mua ha ha ha ha ha ha! My private lessons are going well and my new girl even got to use her English on a foreigner which she was really shy about. Ha ha ha. I think it's funny because it's a very typical Chinese-girl-thing to be: extremely shy.

Aside from that nothing else is new. I'll chat in another couple weeks. ^_^ take care!