‘Cause it is sitting out on the balcony drying.
October 16th, 2006
Yeah, so they don’t have dryers here or something. Today Yolanda got sick, (HEALING!) and Tom stayed home with her to keep her company and to do all of our laundry while the rest of us got to go play. He is such a sweet guy… But anyway my underwear is out on a balcony for all of northern China to see. At least it is clean.
Enough talk about my underthings. Today, we walked across the number 1 bridge. A long walk with nothing really to see. Every few minutes a scooter or bike would come up the sidewalk honking to tell use to move over.
Once on the otherside we hit up Snack Street. An odd place, and one that I finally found out what that horrible smell is in the mall. Stinky Tofu. Yep gross stuff. But the Snack Street is just as it sounds, a street filled with snack venders. They sold tons of stuff to eat for 1 to 3 Kuai. I could tell you everything there, but instead I will tell you what I ate, cause that is a whole lot more personal.
I had a pork sandwich thing on pita-ish bread (pretty good), fried stinky tofu (kind of gross, actually), deep fried persimmons (just okay), some imitation-crab-with-corn-and-some-other-stuff-all-wrapped-in-seaweed-somewhat-korean thing (weird), hot dry noodles, a local speciatly (tasted like noodles with peanut butter on them), a dumpling thing with corn in it (made me realize that I don’t like corn cooked in other things that much), and a salty donut (actually really, really good. It isn’t so much salty as just not sweet.).
Most of that was just tasting other people’s food, so I left there hungry…
After that adventure, we all hopped in some cabs to go to Carrefour and Hom Mart. Cabs are actually cheap here. It cost something like 25 Yiyuen to go thirty minutes. And there are 8 Yiyuen in a Dollar. The driving here requires a whole different email; it is just that cool… So at Carrefour we split up and about half of us went to Hom Mart to price some wood for making some benchs. Hom Mart is like an OSH or Home Depot. They have everything you would ever need for your house, mirrors, bowls, sinks, toilets, really cool showers, fish tanks, tile, miter saws, hammers, wood, wood flooring, fake wood, fake wood flooring. Everything you would need for a house, except an axe or shovel.
Yesterday we took out a tree from someone’s yard, with a shovel, a wood saw, and a meat cleaver. The cleaver was actually really effective. Well we were told that they wanted the other tree out, cause it was dying, and an axe would have just been so nice to use. But Hom Mart doesn’t have them, or any long handled tools for that matter…
Well, that was my excitement for the day. Mostly, I am tired now and can’t remember much more. I write these emails at the end of the day, when I have stuff to say and time to say it, and then I save them to a disk and copy and paste them in to emails when I have time. So this might all be late news to some of you, but it is my spin on it. I don’t really know how long it takes for these letters to get to you… I am just glad that they do.
Tomorrow is the health test and I have to do a twelve hour fast. At least missing breakfast is easier than other meals.
Peace, love, and all that other stuff.
