New suit and shoes

So I want to confirm that the stereotype of Chinese people eating dog is absolutely true - at least in this region. In my time here so far I've seen a few dogs being butchered or parts of some being sold on the street. Yeah all kinds of meat are butchered and sold at little stands on the streets. Rebecca and I had a sort of funny encounter with this fact on our morning walk to the bus station last Thursday to go to Da Tian. We were walking along and a man across the street gives us a big 'Hello!' and a wave with one hand and then lifts his other arm up holding a pole with a dead dog hanging on the end of it.

I know some of you are dog lovers and I myself really like dogs. But yeah, that's just how they do things over here. It might seem strange or even wrong, but you really only have a right to complain if you are a vegetarian. Us meat eaters have no room to judge eating dogs when we kill pigs and cattle everytime we enjoy a delicious burger or bacon.

I haven't talked about teaching for awhile, so I'd like to mention that we basically recycled a lesson from a couple weeks back for this past week. Instead of using Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again," this week we used the The Avett Brother's "The Ballad of Love and Hate." It was a good song to use since it is very long (took up the whole class period going over it), the lyrics are clear and understandable, and it tells a story. It was pretty awesome seeing a classroom full of Chinese kids singing along to The Avett Brothers.

Saturday Rebecca and I had our first experience cooking - well mostly Rebecca but I helped a little. I woke up in the morning and a couple of English teachers were in our apartment with Rebecca - they went to buy some food off the street for making dumplings earlier - a large carrot, some pork, and some pasta sqaures from the dumpling restaurant to make our own dumplings. I helped make a few dumplings, grabbing a thin pasta square, using the chopsticks to grab a little carrot/pork mix, and then wrap/fold the dumpling. One of the teachers did the cooking, boiling water in our wok and boiling the dumplings for several minutes. It was a good meal - maybe I will attempt to make some when I return to America.

Making dumplings in our dining room





Today we got lunch on one of the many boat restaurants on the river. Sitting next to the water I could see lots of litter and garbage floating by, and some of the patrons and restaurant hosts didn't think twice about tossing tissue paper into the river. !!! Anyway, there was kind of a funny moment because our waitress handed us two glasses for our table. One had a small blemish on the lip, and the woman picked it up and looked at it for a second, and then just tossed it into the river. We had a good laugh after she walked away. It's too bad, I would have kept that glass. I just thought that moment was kind of funny.

Anyway, today was kind of a big shopping day for me as I picked up a few nice items. My first find of the day was a big "Adidas" (emphasis on the "") backpack. I bought it to replace the small backpack that I carried over with me, as this one can hold more stuff. I know it's probably not the best quality, as it's not really an Adidas bag, but hey I haggled it for 25 RMB, which is about 4 bucks American. Flying over here I only had one big backpacker-type backpack and one smaller school backpack for everything I brought with me - I like to pack light. This is a slight upgrade to my carry-on backpack and will be great for traveling in the future for all kinds of trips.

Last night I went shopping around for shoes - I figure it's best to go ahead and get a good pair or two over here where I can find a much better deal on some. I found a few last night but they didn't have my size, 46. I figured my waiguoren feet were just too big for the shops over here - no one carried size 46. However, I didn't think to look for size 44, which also fits - turns out about everyone has shoes in this size. I went to the store today that I went to last night to try on the cool shoes in a 44 and they fit fine. Sweet, time to go back and get the moolah to buy them.

After going back home to get the money, I walk back into town and decide to stop and look at some suits in a store. One of the women at the shop gives me a suit to try on so I do, but I don't really have an intention on buying it, since I didn't have the money - the price read something above 500 RMB. However, I like it and she thinks I want to buy it, so she goes to check it out and I try to explain I don't have the money for it. I show her that I have 250 RMB and she says that's ok. I confirm it by writing "250?" on a piece of paper and pointing to the whole suit - she says yes. Well, looks like I'm buying a suit today. I was kinda wanting to buy a suit over here at some point anyway, and today I found a deal I couldn't pass up - a nice new dark blue suit for about $37 American.

I now have no money to buy the shoes I originally walked into town to get, so I head back home yet again to get more money and walk back into town to the shoe store, try on the shoes, and buy them. The black leather shoes are really nice - sort of a mix of dress and casual, very clean and stylish. And only $30 American.

I love this country.

Here are the shoes and the suit I bought