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I have a few comments about nasal habits. I'll put it behind a cut for those who have no desire to hear those thoughts ( Read more... )

Things I wish I had brought with us (and will bring back after our trip home for Christmas):

My Converse or Etnies. I really miss having some non-running tennis shoes. I really miss my Converse! Why didn't I bring them? What was I thinking?!

One of those large containers of powdered ranch mix that can be bought at Sam's Club. Mayo and milk are easy to get here. Ranch dressing, not so much.

a Scrabble board

more educational children's books. Books on ants, spiders, volcanoes, sea creatures, bees, anything. We need more books!

good tampons. The only kind they sell here are OB and those are pretty hard to find.

food I plan on eating over the Christmas holidays:

I want my mom to cook all my favorites. I'm sorry, Mom. I promise to help! Vegetable beef stew, biscuit topped chicken pot pie, lasagna, texas sheet cake...

ok, I'm not going to continue this list. I'm making myself too hungry!

The WC

Today we went birthday shopping for Chris. As always, he wants an electronic gadget. The options are either speakers for his iMac, or a PSP. We went to our favorite video game store to look at PSP (which we didn't buy because no one carries the games. You can buy a PSP in virtually every store on that block, but no games. Games have to be ordered. Weird...) While Chris browsed the store, Petey announced that he had to use the bathroom. When Petey says he has to go, he means "I have to go NOW!" The store clerk told us that the nearest bathroom was around the corner, so Petey and I took off in search of it.

Around the corner we went and still no bathroom in sight. We walked past another video game store (this one with an open front and several young guys sitting around a tv with controllers in their hands), a moped repair shop and a produce truck parked on the sidewalk. Where is that bathroom? I should say, where is that toilet, since that is what all the signs say here. I start to think that maybe I can find a corner somewhere that Petey could just pee in. We walked a few more feet, past two women sitting in front of their store shop and stop in front of a playground. I'm gazing at the playground, trying to decide how evil it would be if I just let him pee there when I hear one of the ladies behind me make an attention-getting noise. I turn around and she points around the side of her shop. Taa-daa! There it is, the WC marked in large gold letters on the side of the building.

We rush up to it and find to old gentlemen sitting in front playing Chinese chess. One of them looks up at me and holds up two fingers. I already knew that it often requires payment to use a public toilet, so I wasn't surprised at this. I handed him 2 rmb and he and his friend start grinning from ear to ear. He handed me one back and gave me two squares of "toilet paper" (more like those brown paper towels you find in movie theater bathrooms.) Petey runs in and runs back out right away. "It smells too bad in there!" I handed him the paper towel and he put it over his nose and braved the bathroom a second time. While I waited for him, I notice the old guys are still grinning at my foreign stupidity. By this time I have figured out that he meant 2 jiao (10 jiao make up 1 rmb, so I overpaid him by 8 jiao.) As we walk past them to leave, I didn't even try and get my change from him. Sometimes I figure why bother. It gives them a good story to tell their families when they get home in the evening.