Surprises

I love to eat cereal for breakfast. Before I came to China I was concerned whether or not I'd be able to find American style food for breakfast. But! One day I found Honey Bunches of Oats in the school store. Not my most favorite cereal, and it was way too expensive, but I bought it anyway because I wanted cereal. I thought my worries were over until I realized I needed milk. It's not hard to buy milk, right? WRONG. I haven't bought normal milk yet and every time I go to the store I look carefully at each package and try something new. I've tried the boxed stuff, the canned stuff, and the bagged stuff. It's not milk. Soon I may give up and just buy the soy milk in the school store, but I'm not a huge fan of soy milk. The last "milk" I bought was in a bag. I was told by experienced buyers that it was milk. I opened it up, poured it in the cereal, then stared at it for a while when I saw what it was. Once again, it was yogurt. Yogurt here is drinkable, so I easily mistook the squishy bag as liquid milk. Some day I will find milk. Some day. It may be the last day I'm here, but I will find it.

I used to go to a little restaurant near my school for dumplings. A couple owned it and it was always quite busy. The reason I say I used to go to this place is because this is what we found one day when we were heading over there for lunch...

It's completely gone. My heart broke as we saw the owners of the dumpling place and other vendors digging through the mess to take whatever they could. We don't know when or why this happened.

I went to a market a few days ago with some of my other classmates. This is an indoor market and pretty much a tourist attraction. I walked around with Linden and we thought we made a pretty good team! We quickly found out that they hate it when you try to talk with your friend - they'd much rather have it be just you - which makes sense. So Linden and I would use this to our advantage and have mini conversations during the negotiation process. We'd always mention how it was too expensive and we really didn't need whatever it was. I had heard before I came that if the people started insulting you that meant you were actually getting a decent price(they'll be super nice the whole time if they're getting a big profit out of you). I wasn't exactly sure what they had meant by that because I couldn't imagine someone trying to sell me something insulting me. And I was also told that they will not sell to you if they are not getting a profit, so do not believe them when they try to get you to raise your price by guilt tripping you. But I quickly found out what these insults are...and boy, are they insults.

I was told that I am a mean girl when I bought a sweatshirt from a lady. She also told me during the negotiation that she didn't want to waste her time on me and that my price was so ridiculous. She laughed at me - a lot. Yet she still sold it to me...huh. Must not have been that bad of a price for her.

I was looking at some purses and mentioned what I thought was a pretty low price to a lady and she came back with a price only a bit higher so I knew instantly that my price was too high. We went back and forth a bit, but by that time I didn't even want the purse so I told her I didn't want it. She took that as a negotiating strategy and tried to get me back. I told her I really, truly, did not want it and it seemed like she was about to lose it. I just kind of scooted away as she was yelling at me " Is this the American way?! Is this what you do?! You are so rude!"

The best was when Linden and I each found a pair of athletic shoes we wanted. We tried our best to buy our items together because the more you buy the cheaper you can get them. We told the lady that together we'd pay 120rmb (about $20) for both of them. They're clearly knock off Nike's and we both have no desire to pay a large amount for shoes we probably won't even bring back. She wanted us to pay around 650 rmb ($120ish). We refused to listen to her as she told us she'd give us a discount because we're friends, so we could pay 350 rmb, then she said that because I spoke Chinese so well she'd give us a discount, so we'd pay like 320rmb. This whole time I never raised my price from 60 rmb per shoe. She kept begging for me to raise it higher. Multiple times I said, okay, fine, we will not pay your price, I'm sorry, we are leaving now. I'd turn to leave (there was an escalator right by this spot) and she would grab my arm and turn me around. Eventually I really did start to get sick of it because neither of us were moving with our price. I basically ran onto the escalator with Linden so she couldn't grab my arm. That's when she yelled "HEY! COME BACK HERE!" I couldn't believe it. There were tons of people between us and she is just shouting at me. She told us she'd do 60 rmb per shoe! So once we got to the top, we went back down to talk with her. Once down, she tried to raise her price. I had none of it and turned right back around. She (expectantly) grabbed my arm and said she'd take our price. She then shoved the shoes in bags and took our money. I thanked her as she had her head down putting our money away. What she did next surprised me more than anything else I experienced that day. She looked up at us with the biggest smile on her face and told us "You girls are really tough. I like you." 

Thursday we went to The Temple of Heaven. This is where the Emperor would go to pray to heaven each year. It's a really gorgeous place with garden surrounding each of the historical spots. It's kind of like a hang out place for older people. They play chess, have dance lessons, and do taiji in the park.

This is the main attraction. The inside is really pretty, but the lighting was bad so it was too dark for a picture.

Look at how high this guy has his leg! I was quite impressed.

Yes, I do realize that I'm being just like the people that sneak pictures of me.

He is way more fit than I'll ever be.

This was the echoing wall. We didn't actually go up to it because this sea of blue school age kids basically took up the whole place. 

Wednesday my teacher was late 20 minutes. While we were waiting for her to come I told my classmates that if a teacher is late 10 minutes in America that we can leave. They were all in shock that you could do that! So we all stared at the clock until she was late ten minutes and then joked about leaving. When she finally did come she was so happy to still see us there! She bought each of us half a sandwich as a sort of apology. We got lucky with that one because I heard that when another class's teacher was late that teacher said they had to stay extra to make up for the time missed. Makes me appreciate my teacher even more!