Sept 21 2013

Saturday! And what a Saturday we had.

I woke up with my feet still hurting. Super thrilling, I know, so we lazed around when we woke up, took our time, I took a nice warm shower, and we had snacks for breakfast. Katie had most of them, actually, since she was starving… I keep wondering if she’ll gain like 30 lbs before we get back, but with all the energy we’re using, probably not! Haha.

We’d been planning on the Ancient Town for this three day weekend, doing it one of the days and since we didn’t do it before we were going to do it today. Except for my aching feet, so we decided to put that on hold since it would be more of a full day thing, and I was not about to have enough energy for something like that.

It took us a while, but eventually we got out of the house and onto the bus at noon [although it definitely fooled us because the bus came around and didn’t even stop for us… and came back five minutes later. Weird!], and headed into town. We were sort of shopping and sort of looking for Pizza Hut… nothing serious in mind.

Oh, although in one of the tourist books left to us here in the apartment it mentioned Hequn lane had lots of Asian shops from Hong Kong, Taiwan and so we went to find that. We got off our 69 bus and soon found a 20 bus [I found it!], so we jumped on that and took it down until we spotted the road [thank goodness they use some letters on some signs], so we got off there.

We grabbed lunch between bus stops, however, because we didn’t have any more single Yuan bills. And of course, it was noon and we hadn’t eaten yet! So we got the “Cold Noodles”, Guiyang’s famous dish. Seriously, they are little carts everywhere. It’s awesome! We sat down for that and seriously enjoyed enjoyed some noodles [without any chili sauce of course], and then onto that 20 bus.

From there, we started strolling around. I was immediately lost, as usual, but Katie kept turning us around in places. We stopped for a cold snack- I had a Sprite and she got an ice cream bar [which I know, is crazy for me not to take the extra sugar but I figured having something very familiar in my tummy would make it keep its peace, which it has been doing], and we wandered around.

Lots of fun shops! Katie bought a gift for a family member, and I found this super cute striped wallet with a stitched up elephant and heart so I couldn’t resist. And we found our silly pajamas! I’ve always been told I’m cute like a kitten… so mine has kittens on it. I found the perfect one for Katie, super cute stripes with a big panda bear!

And we found more sweaters! Well, cardigans. I bought two because you really can never have enough, and Katie got one as well. Those ladies were super sweet, and we got good deals on them as well. Very friendly to us!

By then I was very lost but Katie has some innate sense of direction, I don’t know where it came from or how it works- but it works. Through those twisting streets and all the bridges we passed, she always knew how to get us places. It’s ridiculous, but so helpful!

On and on we walked! We saw a lot of people selling pieces of bamboo to eat- they’d cut off the bark and you could sort of eat what’s inside. We’re definitely going to attempt it sometime, but we’re still a little nervous about it.

At one point, I made us take a quick break where we each had a piece of gummy corn candy [Katie loves these!], and this guy came over and sat nearby smoking a loooong wooden pipe. It was so cool! Very Chinese- I got a picture of it, the tourist that I am. The little sites like that are just so unbelievable, I love it.

On and on we walked. We tried to aim for downtown about then, because we’d talked about trying Pizza Hut and figured we might as well, you know? Not that we ever ended up finding it… but we did get back to our bus route and everything! We had walked back the whole distance of the 20 bus we’d gone on. Kinda crazy… then we went up to a hooded overpass with lots of shops. We hadn’t done this the other day because I was not about to do any more stairs, but this time I still had some energy so up we went!

It was awesome. Definitely a hot spot. It’s pretty big, so there’s a few different aisles and places to go through. A lot of them carry much of the same- fun normal clothes or shoes, maybe some jewelry- the basics of a department store, actually.

Katie found a fun Eiffel Tower necklace [hey, why not?], I got a family gift, then I found a fun jacket that I’d been wanting, and we considered a few more things as well. Katie ended up finding another pair of shoes at a market nearby this overpass as well.

Then there was a ton of walking. We went about half a mile up, changed our minds, went back, and got on the bus home! My feet were killing me by then, that’s for sure. This one Chinese young man ended up giving his seat to me halfway through, partially because he only had another two stops, but still- he made sure I got the seat which was super nice of him! I may have only thanked him in English though, now that I think of it…

By the time we got close to home, the bus was nearly empty. Katie had a seat by then as well, of course. We were going to get off the stop before the one closest to home, so we could walk down the hill and stop at the bakery on the way home. Except the bus driver didn’t see anyone there, so he kept going!

So a Chinese lady started yelling at him, and he slowed down right next to our school, and most of the bus got off there! It was pretty funny, to find that’s where we all wanted to get off… Anyways, we walked down to the bakery, then crossed to get fruit at the market- there, this older gentleman spoke a little bit of English and talked a little to us there. Yes, we are living here in Guiyang. We’re teachers. His reaction was that we were too young! We should be students! It was pretty funny, and he was really nice.

Anyways, we finished up there, came home and unloaded all of our awesome purchases!

Oh, and last thing: a lot of people wear colored hemp-like jewelry with some jade beads. So we found this street seller on our way, and we stopped. It was super tricky trying to get our point across- even with my handy dandy notebook she wrote things out in Chinese which would not help us at all- but eventually we got brown necklaces with jade beads and a happy Buddha pendant. We spent 100 on them together so 50 each which is about 9 USD. Definitely too much, we believe, but we were having a tricky time communicating with her and I didn’t want to waste our effort and hope to find another one again… I just didn’t care too much, basically, and we’re very happy with them!