Today could come to be known as many things….The Day of Waiting, The Day we Walked Down
25 Flights of Stairs, The Day we visited a 7-story Mall, The Day we Found the
Supermarket, The Day Lucas Put Himself to Bed before 7pm, or The Day of Lego…..but
more than likely, this day will become known as The Day I Said a Bad Word in Chinese…it went a little something
like this:
Our morning started about 4am, when Lucas in all his bed-hog
glory was pushing and kicking me prior to wanting to get up at 4 am!! I was
able to get him to stay in bed until 6, but then we got up, I just couldn’t
hold him off any longer. We got up and it was time for breakfast….you guessed
it, pancakes and watermelon. J
After breakfast, it was time to get ready for the day. This was our free day
before the group trip tomorrow and our busy crash-course of a week starting.
Since there is no bathtub, we had to take a shower, where we discovered that
#1: the shower door leaks and #2: the drain does not drain. The water was dangerously
close to overflowing into the whole bathroom, so shower time was dramatically
diminished in an effort to NOT flood the bathroom. After we got dressed, I
fumbled my way through figuring out how to run the washing machine (of course
all the buttons are in Chinese). It was not even 10 minutes after the machine
started that I went back into the bathroom and noticed that the washing machine
was FLOODING the floor!!!! I immediately shut off the machine and called my
agent. What a way to start the day! The plumber came about a half hour later
and after much work and several calls to the agent to translate, it came to be
that the problem was bigger than expected and he couldn’t fix it. Someone else
was going to have to fix it and they would come 1-2 hours later. It was 10:15. Since
I figured we did not have time to go to the market, which was what we were
going to do today, I decided to do some more cleaning. We had the Legos out all
over the floor and decided to build for a while, which we did. Lucas really wanted
to work more on his “city” and today it was centered around building cars for
the city, which he then decided to race. After a bit, I was feeling antsy, so
we went on a walk across the street to another section of the Sunny Era
Community, which is where the pool/recreation center was. The great thing about
our community is that though we are in the big city, it covers a huge area and
has trails and paths all over the place, with many. Many ponds, trees, bamboo,
and other lush green foliage. We walked around for a bit, but was unable to
find the recreation center before it was time to head back to the apartment to
wait for the plumber. So, we got a really nice walk in, but did not find what
we were looking for. When we got back, it was time to make lunch. Since we have
been getting up at 4am, lunch comes early. I made pancakes again (big surprise)
with kiwi today.
After lunch, the plumber still had not arrived. I called my
agent and was about to leave to go to the market when he arrived. He worked for
about an hour and a half on the drain. I made several calls to the agent to
translate, though I still do not know really what the problem was or what was
done. Not knowing the language has been a huge challenge and I have a lot
better understanding of how that feels now. To be in a place where you are
basically illiterate, trying (and wanting) to communicate, but unable to…After
he was done, I paid him the 30Rmb (or quai) and got a handwritten receipt to
get reimbursed from the agent.
When finally the work was done, we went down to the
management office to ask about ordering water for the water machine. When we
walked out of the apartment, Lucas asked again (he’s asked several times) to
walk down the stairs to the 1st floor. I agreed and there we were
walking down the 25 flights of stairs. I noticed that on every floor, there
were piles of things that people were ‘storing’ on the landings. Also, on each
floor, there was a large tin coffee-like can for cigarettes. It seems that people just smoke in the
stairwells out the windows. It must be pretty common for there to be cans on
each floor. When we got to the management office, the lady was able to get it
ordered and told me that it would be delivered in a half hour…so, back to the
apartment we went to again, WAIT. It was surprisingly fast though, and he was
there in about 15 minutes. He got it all set up for us, then again, we were
off.
I wanted to see about the Capital Mall, which is close to
Metro and I was able to still see the apartment from there. Lucas hailed us a
taxi and I tried to explain to the driver where we wanted to go, but he was not
understanding. I attempted to look up “capital” in my English-Chinese
dictionary, but no luck. After several minutes of this, I said sorry and gave
our cab away to some other girls walking up. We went back into the management
office, since now I knew there was someone in there that spoke some English,
and asked her to write “Capital Mall” in Chinese so I could show the driver.
The next driver knew once I showed him in Chinese, and it was back into the
taxi.
We made it to the mall and upon seeing the merry-go-round
and boat-water gun ride, Lucas wanted to go. So, for the low price of 10 quai
for both of us (about $1.40) we rode this thing for about 8 minutes. J What a deal!! When we
first walked into the mall, what did we see????
A LEGO building exhibit!!! There
were tables with regular sized Legos, Duplo Legos, and some rubber Legos that
were very large all set up for kids to play with and build. What a treat! We played with the Legos for a bit, got our
picture taken with the human-sized Lego man, then off we went to walk around
the mall to try to find the largest craft store that Mom had told us about.
This led to us going up escalator after escalator, searching floor after floor
(to discover pretty much every store you’d find in an American mall, filled
with TONS of shoppers!!). When we finally made it to the top, we were on the 5th
floor! Then I noticed looking down that
it appeared to be another floor below the one that we started on! So, down,
down, down we went to our starting floor, then down one more. On this floor, we
found Toys R Us as well as a farmers market.
Lucas was most excited about Toys R Us (obviously) and I about the
farmers market, where I found some organic noodles and rice to add to the
cupboard. I wasn’t too excited about the look of the veggies I saw, so I passed
them over. We ventured on and found that there was yet ANOTHER floor to this
mall!!! As we came down the escalator,
which was unlike any I had seen before as it was a RAMP escalator rather than a
regular stair escalator, I saw A GROCERY STORE!!!! It was like finding gold at this
point!!! We walked in and there was a
plethora of fruits and veggies at first sight.
We picked several different items: cantaloupe, peppers, bananas,
carrots, grapes, pears and then walked on. Using my dictionary, I asked where
the tofu was, and behind a counter similar to a meat counter, there was the
tofu. The man got our brick of tofu, I thanked him, then off to use my
dictionary again to find soy sauce…another success!! We found yogurt for Lucas, then as we were
walking saw CEREAL! Lucas chose some Chinese fruit loops and cocoa puffs, while
I chose honey nut cheerios. We looked around for some other items on our list,
then I remembered I wanted to get some vinegar to mix as a cleaning solution.
The dictionary said CÙ so I
approached a worked and said “kuhooo” and she looked at me in utter shock! I
repeated myself and then she giggled and waved her friend over (two of them
came) and I repeated myself. They all started laughing and then turned around.
I was clueless, so I kept repeating myself and trying to show them the word
written in pinyin in my book, when another worker came over (now I started to
feel kind of like a side-show) and I said the word to her. She just stared at
me and I said “vinegar.” She pulled out her phone and put in vinegar, said ‘oh’
and led me down an aisle, when I saw it!!!!
I picked it up in excited relief and said, “VINEGAR!” When they saw it,
they read the price tag in Chinese and said, “oh, /suhooo/” and walked away
giggling. I said thank you and GOT OUT OF THERE as quick as I could!!! We
finished shortly after that, and went up to the counter. As the checker was
ringing up our items, she came to the fruits and veggies. She saw the grapes,
said something to me, I said “I don’t know” and she put them under the counter.
This happened again with the peppers and the new veggie.” I was SO
confused!!! Then I saw a girl behind us
in line with fresh fruit in a bag that had a bar code on it. An image popped
into my head of when we were in the produce section. I thought it odd at the
time, but EVERYTHING for the most part was individually packaged and there was
a woman in that section who was weighing and wrapping produce in the aisle. It
suddenly occurred to me that I should have had my produce weighed and bar-coded
in that section before checking out.
Regardless, we hit the motherload of food tonight and I felt really good about
the variety we would now have in the house. We made our way back out of the
mall (after a quick look around Toys R Us).
We crossed the street and found a taxi, finally on our way home.
When we got home, we decided to have cereal and kiwi for
dinner. It was quick and we were
exhausted!! Lucas finished rather
quickly and wanted to be done. I told him ok and he said he wanted to lay down
(it was 6:40). After I finished my cereal, I went in to see what Lucas was
doing, and he was ASLEEP!!! Feeling rather exhausted myself, I did the dishes
and climbed into my own bed at 7pm, sleeping for the first time in about a
month and a half by myself... Goodnight Beijing!!
Things I took for granted: common language, tap water,
convenience
Things I learned: I need to practice the Mandarin
pronunciation for the pinyin sounds. Weigh my produce prior to taking it to the
check stand. Traffic rules don’t really apply here.
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