My friend Stephanne took us shopping today. She is the gal from Missouri I met in the subway the third day we were here(see day three entry if you don’t remember). We went to the Optical market and bought Aiden two pairs of eye glasses today for 300 Yuan. That is about $21 each. They are each nice titanium frames. We gave them the prescription, picked out the frames and had the glasses on Aiden’s face within an hour. Wow!! And all for $21, how can you beat that price and timing? I think they are the same frames and lenses that you buy in the US for a couple of hundred dollars. Stephanne has had several pairs made at this particular shop and has worn them for over a year and says they are great. I just can’t believe the prices of some things here. Some things are really expensive and it doesn’t make sense to buy them here in China, but eye glasses are not one of them. We haven’t bought a lot since we’ve been here, I am not a big shopper, but I left the markets today with a major shopping high.
Next we headed to a small silk shop that makes all the major hotels silk comforters. This place is a complete hole in the wall, but apparently the place to shop. There were three ladies and one gentlemen in a 20ft by 20 ft building who made one silk comforter after another while we were there. The kids and I really enjoyed watching the process. I had silk comforters made for all our beds. We have them on our apartment bed and they are nice. Our comforter on our apartment bed is more comfortable than the down one at home and no more worries about allergies from the down feathers. They will be available next week and I am very excited about this purchase. Again this purchase was very reasonably priced. I think the total was around $300 total for four silk (the real thing, not some cheap imitation), very thick comforters. Now when the power goes out for a week at home, we will be very toasty warm at night! Here are pictures of the four person team making a comforter. It was very interesting to watch. They start with a rather large piece of silk and they spread it out to the desired measurements. Then they keep adding layers until it gets to how ever many kilos you ordered. When they get to the desired thickness they do some rolling and pulling to get it all leveled out and then eventually stitch the corners together. After that they sew a cotton cover over the entire silk piece. They were very careful to make sure it was all pulled very evenly and stitched in place. Watching it reminded me of that show "How is it made" on the Discovery channell.
Stephanne lives down the street from us, but far enough away that we haven’t really explored her area. She showed us several new restaurants that we can now check out in our final week and a half here. We are quickly tiring of the restaurants in our area so it was very exciting to learn of a new area to explore that was within walking distance. These are some of the little things that make our life more enjoyable these days. We had a very nice lunch with her today and again I got to hear lots of perspectives from someone from the US whose been living here for a year. I will share later…
Oh and another potty picture and story. (Just stop reading now if you are sick of hearing about bathrooms!) So I think I went into the ultimate in gross toilets on this shopping excursion ( I couldn’t use it). The bathroom has three stalls in a row. There is one trough that runs through the three toilets. The stall on one end has the water source that periodically flushes and the stall at the far end has the hole in the bottom of the trough. So….if you are in the middle stall and some one on one end does their business it floats past you to the other stall to go out the hole. OMG! This is the worst! Who designed that? It’s bad enough that I have to go into these bathrooms and look at the garbage can full of used toilet paper and "red pee" Claire keeps asking me about, but now I have to see other people’s excrements too. I chose not to go into nursing because I didn’t want to deal with other people's stuff and now I have to see it when I use the public bathroom. No thanks. This is not an obervation it is an opinion!
3 comments:
Now... *that* trough toilet is what I think of when I think of the bathrooms in China that I experienced. :) The whole "let's-see-what-came-out-of-your-body-orifice" experience.
I'm kinda sad that you didn't get to partake, Hollie. You know... some might even say you just haven't been to China until you used a trough toilet ... :) (Disclaimer to readers: Hollie's blog just brings out the gross in me. I honestly usually don't have a potty mouth like that.)
p.s. I'm so envious! Those silk comforters sound luxurious. Maybe you could start an import business... :)
I guess you need to use the first stall and not the middle one when faced with another trough toilet!That way you will be the first in line to leave your specimen for someone else to see! ha-ha... Gotta have humor when in nursing and I ought to know...
Well you'll be happy to hear (or maybe not so happy...)we are taking Jeff to the glasses place today to buy him some sunglasses. He and I have been hit with the travelers intestinal bug so we may have to visit that trough toilet on our way...so I may get to experience real China today. We only have a few days left here and I had managed to keep everyone well the entire time, figures we would get sick now. We went out to eat with a group of Jeff's friends from work two nights ago and we are pretty sure that's where we picked up what ever it is we are experiencing now. Funny none of the kids are sick, so clearly it's something only Jeff and I ate. Ugh!
If I had known about this silk place before I could have taken orders and sent them home to all of you. Too bad I figured it out the last week I was here.
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