I Do Not Think That Word Means... (a chronicle of epic adventures)

Some days in China there is not much to say except Oh China.

Because so many things happen.

This afternoon, Mel and I walked into the "red and yellow" market (thus creatively named by us for its red and yellow sign).  It's chilly outside (although was warm enough today that I was fine in a hoodie -- lovely!) so of course my glasses steamed up the instant we walked through the doors.  We had been drinking bubble tea as we walked, and I had just finished mine as we got inside.

"Oh, here's the trashcan!" Mel said helpfully.  I pushed my glasses up on top of my head and put my cup inside.

At least, I tried to put my cup inside.  But it seemed to be rather full.  So I shoved my cup a little harder, realizing that something was not working and wondering what on earth was on top of the trashcan and trying to see what was inside and get my glasses untangled from my hair.  And one of the women who works there was coming over to see what the crazy foreigner (read: me, this is where it's a little unlucky to stick out so obviously) was doing. 

All three of us came to the same conclusion at about the same time.  "Oh no!" Mel said, pointing to something else.  "THIS is the trashcan!"  The saleslady was also telling us something... and I realized that yeah, the thing I was trying to put my cup in was definitely not a trashcan.

Fail.

Oh well, we bought our vegetables and continued onward to the meat market.

~~~~~

At the meat market (which sells a lot of things besides meat... such as vegetables and oil and jiaozi and cloth and coats and... everything pretty much) I was buying a lot of frozen chicken, since it is my duty to prepare cola chicken for both teams for our Thanksgiving dinner part 1, which will be held on Wednesday evening next week if all goes according to plan.  There was another man buying chicken ahead of us, which the chicken-seller was vigorously chopping up.

The man ahead of us was very excited about his purchase and wanted very much for Mel and I to be able to share in his excitement.  Unfortunately, all of his friendly and energetic admonitions to Mel that she should translate what he was saying for me did nothing to magically teach either of us all the words that he was using that we didn't understand.  (This is where it is lucky for me that I look foreign... random strangers in the market don't expect me to speak Putonghua -- Mandarin.)  So all we really got was a lot of zenme shuo-ing (how to say....?) and hysterical miming of a chicken beak and wings and xiao ji, xiao ji (small chicken!  small chicken!!) and he finally took his bagged chicken and went off with many ecstatic smiles bestowed upon us. 

I still haven't the foggiest clue what he was trying to tell us.  We could see that it was a small chicken.  We could see that it had wings and a beak.  I hope that he enjoyed eating it as much as he enjoyed anticipating it. 

~~~~~

Then we went to JiangShan, a street where we do a lot of shopping.  We were buying all sorts of things (which involved some other stories about not-quite-communication), but I think the highlight of that section of the day came as we were leaving the last shop and going out to find a taxi to take us back to campus. 

I slipped.

Earlier in the day I had slid down a ramp, but managed to stay on my feet despite the fact that I was carrying an awful lot of frozen chicken.  This time, on the other hand, with both hands quite full, I went from walking along to on the ground and I have no memory of being in a state of falling in between. 

Mel's response, of course, was asking if I was okay and trying to help me up while laughing so hard herself that I thought she was also going to get to experience the joys of being on an icy stone surface.  And that is a true friend.  (For anyone present for Rachel Sush's epic fall down the stairs at XiaDa last year... this was probably comparable.) 

~~~~~

I am just going to mention the fact that our taxi had a female driver and the picture of the licensed operator showed a rather beefy male.  It seemed like a fitting bit in the day.

~~~~~

And that class of 37 that I invited?  Ten of them came tonight.  Ten was a great number.  Hilary helped me prep snacks like a rockstar (see, Amy in FoCo, what you have me saying?) -- raw veggies with ranch dip (thanks to the FoCo people) and oreos and crackers and candy and drinks and we played a lot of UNO and Mel hang out with us and students sang and danced and gave each other grief and we laughed a lot and they inspected all of the pictures on my wall intensely.

The way we played UNO was a little different than anything I've ever done before... rather than "uno" meaning "I am down to having one card" it meant "I have no playable cards and must draw".  I thought about trying to correct this, but it didn't seem worth it, and the game was going alright anyway, so... my apologies to anyone else who plays UNO with my HR class.

It was Lola's birthday.  They said they were honored to be at my apartment.  I was honored that was how she spent her birthday evening!

We did get some pictures, I'll hopefully post at least one or two later.

It was a great day.