Back from Thailand. Preparing for lessons. Watched some movies.
Reading One-year Bible. Cleaned the apartment. Gordon made a lantern
and a food dehydrator.
We apologize for not blogging more. Sometimes, I feel like my life is
unworthy to blog, so I stopped, but now I know some of you actually do
want to read about what we do day in and day out, so here's something.
More to come.
We're two days out of the heat wave. The temperatures were up above
freezing for a few days and the ground was covered with black slush.
During this time, many workers with shovels, tractors, and large dump
trucks managed to
remove all the black slush (which used to be about 6 inches of packed
snow), so that now as the heat wave has left, we can all walk on solid
ground, not black ice. I'm not really giving the full story, the major
roads have always been snow/ice free thanks to amazing manual labor -
we saw workers bundled up in orange safety vests on the roads in the
middle of the night chipping away ice, shoveling snow, and sweeping
away debris. They load the snow into large dump trucks by hand with
shovels and the trucks haul the snow away. But now, even market
street, and the small streets are ice free!
It's a gorgeous day outside, windy, but warm enough that I don't have
to wear long underwear. I walked out of our apartment, and with long
strides on solid pavement, I was able to jump into the
eyeglasses/contacts store and pickup a pair of 6 month contact lenses.
A few steps away, I bought some oxtail from the Binxi beef store. I
needed to add money to our cell phone plus I needed to figure out why
my cell phone wasn't working (I wasn't receiving any texts and
couldn't dial out).
I didn't know if there was a China Mobile store around, but figured
there might be a store on the route I was taking off campus. I walked
across streets, cars just slowly passing by. I noticed I wasn't as
afraid anymore of crossing the street and thinking I'd get hit as
before (the traffic here is so fluid, the cars just go around you). I
saw a China Mobile sign above the tall construction walls for the
Subway. As I approached the vendor, I noticed that the China Mobile
vendor site was closed, the roll top gates were down. Oh well, I'll
keep looking.
I recrossed the street and kept exploring. I peered into many stores,
as I passed people selling all sorts of knick knacks (shoelaces, shoe
soles, bags, gloves, wallets, sweet potatoes, corn puffs, yogurt
drinks, sunflower seeds, etc.) There were stores that sold eyeglasses,
barber shops, convenience stores, restaurants, train ticket booths.
Then I saw the China Mobile logo. Bingo! PTL! I walk inside to where
they are selling cell phones and the lady speaks to me very quickly in
Chinese, “Blah Blah Blah...[too fast for me to understand].” I look at
her confusingly, not sure if I heard her right, so I gesture to her to
repeat it. She then speaks very loudly, "DO YOU NEED TO ADD MONEY TO
YOUR CELL PHONE, IT'S OVER ON THE OTHER SIDE!" I say in Chinese, “I
can hear, do I need to go to that side of the store to add money?" She
says yes. I could hear her laughing and telling her coworkers, how she
thought I was hard of hearing. I add money to Gordon's cell phone.
Then I try to add money to my SIM card, after figuring out that I put
in the wrong SIM card, we fix the issue and I'm back in business.
I continued walking in my long stride on the loop back home, passing
by my regular fruit lady for some mangoes, pineapple, and pears, then
to the vegetable lady for some oyster mushrooms and potatoes. There
are always people that I pass while I walk. There is hardly ever a
lonely street.
Why am I recording this? Because what should have been an hour and a
half errand run turned into a 45 minute adventure!
