2317 4-3-10
Sorry these last couple of days my posts have been so short, the sun comes into my room which wakes me up and so I have a hard time sleeping in, and good luck trying to convince my friends that it would be a good idea to call it an early night. Hell even today I had to go home early cause some of them wanted to truck half way across People’s Square (kind of like the social downtown of Shanghai) to get some ice cream.
So on with the days events. The morning I think you’ll find pretty boring, I just played Europa Universalis III, which is this historic strategy game. Basically you take a country from the year 1399 and play through the 19th century. I like it a lot though I’m sure many others would find it quite boring.
I then went with Clement to get some lunch where we met Ankin (this Swedish guy who we’ve started hanging out with a lot), and Sophie. Clement had a friend coming in from Beijing who he uses to study, so she joined us about thirty minutes later. Her joining the group actually summed up my experience thus far. She only speaks Chinese and Spanish (her Spanish accent is actually pretty damn good), so in order for me to communicate with her I had to speak in English to my French friend Clement, who then translated it into Spanish for this Chinese girl, and then the process had to reverse itself. That has pretty much been my entire experience here.
Afterwards I went off by myself to this huge clothing outlet area, which was like a 20 min walk from the first station on like 10 north of People’s Square, or Qufu Lu Station. Chinese lesson for you, lu means road. There I went in search for a belt and some shoes.
I ended up finding both, though the shoes were kind of a trick because my feet is the equivalent of trying to find a size… 14 or so in the US. People have it, but finding it in the shoe that you actually want can kind of be a real hit or miss. Ended up paying 300RMB for the pair which is about $44, which may seem expensive but shoes are another one of those items that are oddly expensive in China based off of US standards. But I really needed a third pair just to slow down the massive wear I’ve been putting on my other two shoes.
Dear Mom,
Can we go shoe shopping when I get back?
Love,
Son
My note about shopping though is this, being white makes you a super large target. In the case of this outlet mall it was people wanting to show you around the mall (which they then get a commission from the shops if you buy something from one of the stores they take you too). Even with headphones on and bluntly ignoring them they were persistent to the point of real annoyance. The next phrase I’m going to get Ye to teach me will be a literal translation of “Leave me the fuck alone.” Other than that though it was, the shop keepers were nice, and usually pretty reasonable about prices. But I really just wanted to “blend in” as best I could and having people constantly trying to get my attention kind of ruins it, o well. I then met up with my friends back at People’s Square and we had some sushi, and by sushi I mean THEY had sushi and I had some dumplings and a beef rice bowl.
Once I got home I talked with my Dad and Great Grandmother. It’s nice to actually see some familiar faces. Sadly the internet connection really makes seeing a clear picture difficult.
O the rest of my friends just got back from their ice cream journey and they picked me up this laser pointer that Nathan had previously bought. This thing is pretty insane, it can shoot a laser beam about a mile, and it only cost 50RMB. Meaning I can peg almost all of the buildings I can see from my balcony with a little green dot… somehow I can see this not ending well.
^_^
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