Out and About

Tuesday, April 7. A beautiful, beautiful day. High in the low 70s. I have the doors open to both of my balconies all day long. Birds singing. Sun shining. Little breeze blowing. Rapeseed blooming in the farm below my windows.

I walk up to Yandi Square to check out the furniture market. Poke around for awhile. Most everything is very modern (sort of Scandinavian) in style, except the things that are obviously trying to look traditional (e.g. some ornate carved wood furniture). Find the PERFECT chair. It's fabulous. Both footstool and chair glide, the chair is incredibly comfortable, and the back of the chair reclines. It's more than I could have hoped for! Not cheap (in terms of yuan - very reasonable in dollars). I'm trying to decide whether to spring for it. I have saved more than enough from my stipend to pay for it. It would make a huge difference in quality of life here to have a comfortable chair! I'm thinking about all next year . . . it's tempting.

Walk to the "shops at Er Zhong." Find bookends in one of the small stationary stores. I look around for them first but don't see them, and of course I don't know the chinese word (I know the word for book - shu - but not "bookends") so here's what I do: I take about 4 of the middle-sized notebooks off one of the shelves, stand them up on the counter, and then slap my hands on either side of the notebooks to indicate bookends! It's amazing what you can do with pictures or pantomime! They immediately knew what I wanted and pulled them out from underneath some other things, then taught me the word for bookends (shu li). How cool is that?!

Stop in the DVD store and find Gone with the Wind, which I'm thinking of using for English Corner since we did a lot about slavery and civil rights in the context of MLK speech. I thought this might be a good way to show what life was like in the South. I will have to watch it first to make sure it's OK. Also pick up a copy of Forest Gump, which so many people in China seem to know. I want to watch it again.

Down to my little bookstore where I buy a copy of the 21st Century supplement every week. They have the last two issues which is great because I didn't make it up here last week. They also have some relatively recent copies of China Daily so I pick up a couple of those too. I love the people in that shop. They are my friends!

Take a taxi to supermarket. Spend more time than usual looking around. Find some amazing things: toilet paper holder that attaches to the wall with suction cups; a cover for the washing machine (so Chinese!), a set of plastic shelves for the kitchen (I'm moving the wooden set of shelves into my study to use as a bookcase for our English "library"), etc.

At home, Zhang Yong calls and says he needs 7 passport sized photos for me for the application for the Friendship Award (for next year), so I will have to go back up to Yandi Square tonight to have that done!

Make vegetable soup. Tiffany gives me a slice of cornbread that she made in the rice cooker! It's great, especially with the soup.

Grab a taxi up to ErZhong and walk to photo shop. I tell him I need them tonight (jian tian wan sheng - literally "today night") and he does them very quickly. I barely have time to open my book! Then I decide to walk home because it is a glorious evening, balmy but not at all humid, the moon is very bright and almost full.