Sept 7 2013

Saturday started off swell! 

We slept in a bit, read for an hour or two, then walked to the nearby bakery for breakfast. We hadn’t been to this one and had to check it out! Everything was mostly packaged separately which was a little odd, but whatever.

We bought: one blackberry yogurt for Katie. [I actually liked it which was saying something]

Two almond flaky cookies for myself [delicious, but may have a terribly consequence- read more]

A delicious loaf of swirled bread. It was so moist and tender and the best bread I have ever had.

A package of about 10 tiny fluffy croissant rolls.

And one very eggy cake with weird chocolate spread on top- heavy but good! Very thick. I had half of it, and it took me a while to eat. Me! A while!

Anyways, we brought that all back and enjoyed it in our place. It was so good, and very filling!

Once we were done with that, Katie and I started getting ready for the day and also cleaned up the apartment which was definitely necessary to do with these dusty wood floors! We finished off our bakery stuff and finally headed out to meet up with Abby and Greg.

We took the bus for about an hour or so into town, to see the Jiaxiu Tower, I believe it was- a really cool landmark of Guiyang. For the first hour, we didn’t really know where to go but Abby asked a lady on the bus [her Chinese is getting so good!], and we eventually found the right stop, and wandered around for a while, going through the walkways-

In the bigger parts of the city, they put the crosswalks underground. Some of them are big, and people set up shops down there! It’s all supposed to be pretty darn cheap, and it’s fun looking around!-

And finally found it. It’s on the river, and really cool. The architecture is classic and we took tons of pictures of the 3 story building [Once upon a time, it was tall to the people], as we wandered outside and in and towards the other buildings. There’s a little pond in one of the corners, where we found three stray cats drinking the water! Very pretty.

It was a lot of fun, overall.

When we were done with that adventure, we took another walk to find… WAL-MART!

It’s at another city-center place. It’s this huge… thing… it looks like lightening with clouds in the corners. There are pillars leading up to it, and all around they have statues of the Years there. Katie and I are Year of the Monkey- which I always thought was cool except here: it’s more like an ape. Or in certain carvings, it looks like a penguin. Anyways, we walked around and finally found that, took a picture, and headed over to WAL-MART!

First fact: It’s totally underground

Second fact: It smells weird. Possibly because we walked in next to all the sea food. Fish and crabs alive or dead, all for sale.

Third fact: It’s freaking huge!

As in bigger than normal, okay? I wouldn’t say twice the size, since it was kind of hard to tell… but then again, it might have been. There was lots of random cool things there. Katie found massage chairs that we all sat in for a while. I mostly wandered thought: as much as I want to love those chairs, I have found my body is at an irregular height and it always hits up my backbones in a really uncomfortable way. Abby found a cute shirt and it only cost about 2.50 USD. Not as many clothes as I had hoped though. Lots of scarves, however- we’re totally coming back sometime!

They had an imported section- you know, of foods… except it was all imported from like Japan or France or something. The only thing I recognized were Starbucks bottled Frappacinos.  We found the candy, though! That’s the important thing, right? Katie definitely thought so, and I wasn’t about to complain.

Lots of buckets of little pieces, where you could buy a pound for this amount or so you know? So we wandered around and grabbed several different kinds to buy! I’m really excited for some of them, like these blueberry gummy snacks. And a little nervous about things like the gummy corn snacks…

Anyways, we did that and moved on… to the NOTEBOOKS.

The best collection EVER. I wanted to buy all of them. At first I was just going to buy a little handy-dandy one to carry around at all times… nope. I needed more! It doesn’t matter I have like 30 back home, some filled and some not entirely filled. You can never have enough!

I bought a tiny one with a sketch of Italy, I think it was. Another really cool one ‘Diary of the Star’ or something with a single star on it, and there’s some little drawings on the inside flap and a few English translations of “Oops” or “Cuddling is best in relationship” or “Sometimes people have to be left to…” something I don’t remember. Oh, and the expensive one [26 RMB] is called ‘The Book of Answers’ and it looks like an inscribed old book, but you can write it in- and get answers. Like a magic eight ball? It’s got tiny answers up in the corners. Like “You Must” or “Start with an Adventurous Spirit” and things like that. 

It’s just cool.

We also bought a few balls to use for the classes, some packing tape, and Katie bought a few new notebooks as well as a blow up ball globe of the world, all in Chinese but it has an ‘I Heart China’ on it as well- pretty silly and cute!

After buying all of that, we decided to do KFC which is inside the Wal-Mart here. We got the ‘Family Thing’ or other- not really a lot of food though. One corn on the cob on a stick. A tiny side of mashed potatoes with gravy stuck in it [Katie ate those because she didn’t really want chicken with bone in it], about 4-5 chicken thighs and maybe 9 um… smaller thigh bits or whatever. Crunchier and tasty. Oh and it came with what looked like three small Pepsi drinks. Overall, it cost about 74 or so RMB, which we probably will definitely not do again, but it was enjoyable.

And that was about the last good thing for me that day!

Why, do you ask?

Well, because I got sick.

Yeah, not fun. We were barely out of Wal-Mart when the stomach pain started, and we rushed all through the street to find me a bathroom- and then I had to walk up to the third floor. I’ve never been so glad to see a squatter toilet. I wasn’t looking so good even after that, however, and after we crossed a street we had to walk through a very expensive mall to find me a second bathroom.

We hung out there for a while. My stomach couldn’t seem to make up its mind so I walked around a little, drank some water, and finally decided I was good for now. Everyone was kind enough to get a taxi instead of take a very long ride home on a most likely crowded bus, so we snatched up a taxi [had to call Nicole really fast, haha…] and the ride was actually pretty nice.

The taxi driver took us around the other way, the one we haven’t taken yet, which put us by another part of the river and all these bright light bridge places- looked like a super clean and barely crowded Las Vegas, really- and I enjoyed the cool air.

Katie decided it might have been the almond cookies, if it was any food, that made me ill. The timing would have been about right, and it’s the only thing that I ate that no one else did [well I gave her a bite or two but I ate the majority of it], and so it might not have been the KFC but we’ll see… I actually kind of want to try those cookies again and find out. What? They were delicious! Heavenly!!

Anyways… I drank some more water [Katie made me drink almost 2 full bottles], and then we tried some of the candy. Only two pieces though! The first was a nutty peanut butter little bit. So nutty, I could barely do it all and I only ate half. The second was a chocolate ball with a solid but creamy tasty inside. Katie had a hard time with the not-so-great chocolate… but when it comes to chocolate, I’m not too picky. Hey, it’s still chocolate.

Oh and that morning, we also bought a small tin of Nestle chocolate ice cream. It was like 11 RMB- we almost got one that was about 47 of tiramisu. But that would have been more expensive than for the states, it was ridiculous! But yeah, I can’t wait to try that.