July 14 - What's behind that wall??

Hey, dudes.

I find that, if we have one little adventure per day, it helps me immensely to cope. Going out in this heat is a guarantee to return home with clothes completely drenched in sweat, which is hard, but we brave it. So today, our main goal was to figure out what on earth is behind this huge wall we keep driving by.

I'm not sure if I told you this yet, but Ben asked Summer about this wall, and she said that it used to protect the inner city from attackers. It's old, old, old. Ben asked what was behind the wall now, and she tried to tell him, but it was lost in translation. It's really close to our hotel, so we decided to walk on over there today.

Lo and behold, it's a zoo! I should put "zoo" in quotes. There were two hippos, an emu, and a bazillion birds. And a whole lotta trash and disrepair. And that's it. I realized, as we were walking past Stinky Street and down what I now call Bombed Out Road (several buildings have been demolished, but no effort at cleanup has been made - it's just mountains of rubble), this place is a dump. Everywhere I turn, garbage, muck, and stinky stuff. There was a little Funland-type area next to the zoo, but only ride was working, and it was a couple of bucks to have the three kids ride. And the rest of the rides were lying there in disrepair. Pretty disappointing. The best part for me was checking out this old wall. Who even knows how old it is!! It has trees that have punched holes through it.

While we stopped to buy some bottled water in the "zoo," again, we got accosted by very excited Chinese folk. They took ten thousand pictures of us. It's so weird and funny.

The Chinese use different hand signals for numbers. We have to use a lot of hand signals because we don't know the language yet, and I learned today that "ten" is not like I use - holding up both hands with fingers extended. The Chinese cross their two pointer fingers making an "X" in front of themselves to signify "ten." To say "eleven," they do the "hang ten" sign. I've also learned that, to gesture that they want someone to come to them, they don't crook their finger toward themselves. They wave their hand in front of themselves, palm down. Up, down, up, down. They also find it rude to pick their teeth in front of others. If they use a toothpick, they put their hand in front of the toothpick so as not to show their teeth. And showing someone the bottom of your foot is the utmost rude thing to do.

Men here pull up half their shirts when it's hot and just walk around like that, with their little bellies hanging out. I'm jealous of them. And people here crouch all the time. I'm surprised their knees aren't blown to heck. Though I don't blame them for not wanting to sit down on the dirty ground. :) Ben thinks their knees aren't blown to heck because of genetics. I've decided this is also why everyone here is skinny. Because Chinese people pack it away. As Ken would say, they "put away the groceries." They eat and eat and eat. And it doesn't stick. It might also be because everyone rides bikes everywhere. And there are usually multiple people on one bike. The kids ride on the handlebars and usually another adult rides on the pegs on the back wheels.

Dylan and Sadie have become experts at hailing taxis. I think it's so cute. And little Micah knows how to use our card keys to get into our hotel rooms. We have some little city slickers developing here.

There are two kinds of taxis - turquoise sedans and burgandy sedans. If you are lucky enough to see and hail an empty burgandy sedan, oh, that is awesome, because those ones have air-conditioning. The turquoise ones do not.

After we went to the "zoo," we came home - again, that should have quotes around it - "home" - and have been lying in the air-conditioning ever since. I read a few magazines today - ones I bought back in the states - with these amazing recipes in them that I'm desperate to try. But will I be able to find the ingredients? Probably not. We need to take a little trip to this Wal-Mart like place (according to Ben) tomorrow to get some baby wipes, and I want to go to scout out what's available. I'm excited to cook in. I'm tired of eating out. Again, that should be in quotes, the "eating" part. We just kind of pick at stuff. We tried another pizza place today - it was reeeeeally gross.

We also stopped at an appliance store - Ben needs to buy a printer/scanner for our hotel/apartment. The refrigerators at this store are so beautiful! They are painted with lotus flowers, cartoon characters, all kinds of stuff. And they come in all kinds of colors. I didn't find one oven in all of the displays. Yikes. Bikes. Boy, would I like to have an oven in our apartment.

Ben and Summer went to go check the progress of the apartment renovation today - they were unable to go in - they're completely fixing the plaster on the walls and the place was in a shambles. I was happy to hear that they're actually working on it. It will be great to have a place to spread out.

Did I tell you about the babies/toddler's clothes? Camille told me about this before we left. They have gaping holes where their privates should be. No diaper. Just little bumbs and other business showing. They potty-train their kids really early here. What they do is, when they feel their toddler starting to pee or poop, they hurry and take them to a bathroom to finish the business, or they just hold them out in the street and let them poop or pee right there. You have to watch out for poop when you walk anywhere. They DO have diapers for westerners at that supermarket, though, thank goodness.

The kids are still suffering from jet lag - weird that it lasts this long. They crash in the very late afternoon and are hard to rouse for dinner. Ben just went to "May Down Low" to get some hamburgers to bring home - I didn't want to deal with waking the Grumpersons up and trying to get them into a taxi.

Ben bought these DVD's at Wally's before we left - 200 old-fashioned cartoons on like four discs. We brought them with us, and the kids LOVE watching them on Ben's computer. They're watching Gumby now. :) Dylan's favorite is Popeye, and Sadie's favorite is Betty Boop, which she keeps calling "Betty Boob." Dylan has started saying "Gorsh" like Popeye says. We also brought a few of our favorites - Nacho Libre, Napoleon Dynamite, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and The Man Who Knew Too Little. I wish we could have packed more.

We ran into Summer on our way home from the "zoo," and I asked her if there was a swimming pool around. She said there was. Ben thinks he and Summer should check it out before we go. I'd like to go tomorrow, if it's decent and clean.

Mr. Tsuo wants me to teach a class or two at the university - English. I told him that I am soooo not qualified to teach at a university, but he thinks I'm more than qualified. He says I would teach latter classes for English majors, so I wouldn't have to know any Mandarin at all. I don't know - it might be fun. We'll see. I'm not jumping up and down, saying, "Let me teach! Let me teach!" But if it's, like, one evening class a couple of nights a week, and I get paid for it, why not?

I'm so sorry for lack of pictures yesterday and today. I am working on resizing them. And then I'll link you to our Smugmug page on my e-mails and you'll be able to see everything we've been doing.

Love you guys and miss you tons.

Love,
Kar