Thursday, November 14, 2013

Oct 12 2013: Bartering Tricks

It might have been about 5 when I got to bed but they didn’t tell the city and some kind of machine started early enough so we were both up about 10. Five hours of sleep, and though my eyelids hung down in exhaustion, my body was wired for fun! Or something! Maybe just jumping around!

So that’s how our day started. We spent a few minutes trying to sort out any plans. We needed to catch up on our church’s General Conference which I had put on my thumb drive [most useful thing I brought to China, I swear], but we also wanted to go out and look for DVD’s, baby carriers [super pretty and cute and hey we’re girls moving back to Utah next semester and eventually we’ll be married right?], and rain boots [lots of rain and flats are not the best thing to wear through them].

We met up with Nicole and her friend on the elevator and split ways after for a bit. Soon we were boarding the bus away from the sun beating down on us. Thank goodness, because people don’t use sunblock here and I forgot to bring out my pretty umbrella. You can get a decent one for about 35 if not cheaper or something. Super nice and handy. Even my sunglasses have issues.

All the same, we went into town through a few stops and found the corner. We stop right next to it, with the little shops right there. We jay-walked across and wandered around. The DVD’s weren’t too be found [probably only out after dark, that’s when some of the main vendors come out then], so we kept looking. We put a hold on the rain boots for a bit, but we did find baby carriers!

The lady and us had a hard time talking to one another, making any sense. It may be we literally offered her more- we thought she said 80 for one, but we offered 90 for two and she took it. Could be she meant 80 for 2, who knows? Haha! Our bargaining skills may be a little rusty after all!

Anyways, we were super happy with them all the same. Figured we’ll have kids some day and not want to forget all our adventures in China as well so we combined them… in a way. They’re perfect to set on the bottom of a suitcase and don’t weigh too much either. We wandered around after that, deciding against buying rain boots just yet, looked for DVDs [figured they don’t come out till about dark], and kept walking.
We ended up going up the street off to find Pizza Hut where we knew there was to be another DVD area [our next goal]. We seriously wandered about half our bus route and more. We were able to find a KFC which we knew to be near to one of the Pizza Hut shops. However, for the next several hours [between cold noodles and ice cream] we were unsuccessful.

It was nearly 4 about the time we arrived home finally. We grabbed snacks because we were making this our General Conference weekend and you always need snacks to enjoy any TV time, and were finally back in our comfy apartment.

Katie was unable to rest so she read. I passed out for a good hour or so, before jumping on her bed to see what to do next. By then it was around 6, so we dressed up in our sweats then went up the street to get bread at the bakery for conference. Unfortunately they were out of the yummy loaves! So we bought some sliced bread for half the price before going to the little shop next to our first elevator and buying noodle bowls.


Back to our place, we fixed food and talked for about an hour before finally starting conference. We took notes, discussed and saved some talks for later use, and then I took a super long hot shower. Afterwards, we did some journaling before calling it a night.

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