Pudding and Chopsticks

So I got up this morning, at some breakfest and went back to sleep. It was great. I slept into to about noon and deceided to head out to go shopping, or looking, whatever you want to call it. I had a few places in mind that I wanted to go. The first is Walmart. No not Walmart itself but the building that Walmart is in. It contains knock offs and misc items. I hailed my taxi and told him I wanted to go to Walmart. I can say now that I finally have some confidence in speaking Chinese. I think that I could speak it awhile ago but I just and shy doing so. It’s changing. When I got there I could tell that, yeah, it’s the weekend. So many people, and then there was me.  A dude in a purple beanie. Hey, sorry, I didn’t feel like fixing my hair. What can you do. I started on the first floor peaking into Walmart. They might have some sweaters, usually not but it was worth the little time it would take. I entered the store, walked 20 feet, took a look and turned around to leave. There is one entrance to this Walmart. Think of it like a horse shoe. I entered on the left. The exit is on the right. I though I would sneak out since I hadn’t bought anything. The women stopped me and point the other way. I had to walk around the entire Walmart just to exit, are you kidding me? I said a few things that I am sure no one could understand and proceeded to do my best impression of a Nascar weaving in and out of all the baby strollers, moms, kids, people to get the hell out of there. Hold on a sec.       Ok cool, I had to go get my bowl of noodles. Ok, so where was I, um, oh yeah knocks offs. I also did some hand rail testing on the escelators and yes the hand rail does run slower.

When you go into one of these little shops there is someone on your ass right away. “You like, we have new style.” Usually in broken English. This is what I call “store English.” You try to carry on a conversation, not going to happen, you say you like something. Oh you like, very good quality. So funny. What’s even funnier is when you pretend to not understand any Chinese and they start talking about you, oh he’s cute, he’s doesn’t understand. Then you bust out the oh, you think I’m cute, you kinda cute too. That usually blows their mind. Fun stuff. There are a lot of foreigners at this place. Probably because of all the knock offs. You can find just about any watch you want, I mean any. You want that 250,000$ Porche Design, no problem, 50$ usd. So great.

Oh snap some foreign guy taking a photo of me building a manhole. S.

After meandering around there a bit I headed to a street that I’ve only been to once before. But I deciede to go and check it out again. The first time it looked like it might have some clothes that I would actually wear. I walked in and out of the stores looking for well, I don’t know. I found some things, actually pretty cool sweaters and what not. But, the sizes here run small. I need to wear a XL or XXL. Everything is a size smaller and depending on the cut, I may have to go up. Asia. What are you going to do. I also love people who walk three wide down the isle, the sidewalk, the whatever and take the entire path up stopping without notice to check out some crazy ass color panty hose. Damn it annoys me.

Pretty much every place that I went to didn’t have a big enough size or everything ran small, which now that I think about it are one in the same. I did find some that would fit, but I decieded to hold off. Not sure why, but, I did. I then explored a little bit, found a river, walked, took some photos and then walked back to the street with all clothes. I found what I think it the holy grail of neon clothing. They had neon t-shirts, hoodies, one of a kind screen prints. Totally rad. However they wanted 200 yuan for each. About 30$ us. What the h. Actually not too bad but man, that’s a lot in the states for a shirt. Dispite that, I will probably head back to get one or two. Too good to pass up. So all and all I ended up buying a couple dvds. Brand new, new releases for, um, 2.50$ us. But hey you didn’t hear that from me.

So that’s about it. A Sunday full of exploring. Here are the photographs from today.

Once you head out of the modern downtown away from “foreigner country” the city becomes much more interesting. I like it a little better actually.

Dude on bike, street sign, and trees with white on the bottom apparently for the “bugs.” At least that’s what I hear.

The path.

The river thing, man made, nonetheless. Plastic bags and all.

Oh this wasn’t from today but rather last night. Oh sweet Mary mother and Joseph this is a dipping sauce.

And the ender.. Me.

Hey..

So I promised myself that I would try to write something here everyday. It takes a lot. I’m busy. But then again how busy can one person be. I suppose that I’m not that busy. I work, study, and then try to fill the gaps in between with fun stuff. Hasn’t been happening lately though.

I got to thinking the other day about when I was in English class. Yeah, I didn’t like it. I had to quick make up a bunch of stuff just to pass. But now, I kinda enjoy writing. I suppose that if my English teachers could read this now, most of them would be laughing. In fact their probably surprised that I can eve read and write. But nonetheless I’m typing away on this thing called the internet.

I was also thinking today about the wondrous thing we call language. When you are in America, depending where you are, you don’t really have a concept about what language really is, the importance of it, nor do you really need to think about those things. I grew up in a town that was 99.9 percent white and spoke English. Others may have grown up in a town that contained more than one foreign language speaking group of people. I had a revelation about what language really is. Well a revelation for me, for the world it’s probably old hat. But I got to thinking that noises don’t mean anything, but the meaning we assign these noises is what we call language. To see a different language everyday makes you open your eyes. Everyday I deal with three languages. Although I have chosen to learn one of them, it’s interesting to see something that means the same thing expressed with three different sounds.

That’s about all I have currently completed thinking about, at least until I get around to thinking about it some more. I did have another thought. This one about my childhood. I grew up doing everything airplane. I loved airplanes. I wanted to marry one. Well no actually not marry, but to fly yes. So naturally I had the dime store plane, paper planes, and those big foam planes from Walmart. I got to thinking the other day that if I could get my hands on one of those foam bad boys, I would chuck it off my building. A meager 20 stories. But, I bet that sucker would bullet to somewhere. Get a good thermal and just never touch the ground again. I watched a plastic bag the other day fly for ten minutes. I bet a purposely built flying machine would beat feet in the air.. As far as littering goes, have you ever been to China? Another piece of foam is the least of their worries. From now on I’m on a hunt for a foamy airplane. If luck has it one with flames.