The Working Weekend

Wednesday May 1st is the Chinese Labor Day holiday so people were required to work on Saturday and Sunday this weekend, then in return they will receive Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as holidays.  I'm still struggling with this concept of "making up" days on the weekends so you can have days off during the week.  I'll get there eventually but it just really seems odd right now.  It's like- we will give you a "holiday" but you need to make up the days on the weekend.  So technically Bill was suppose to work yesterday and today.  He did about 1/2 days both days and he will work from home Mon, Tues, Wed so it'll all even out.  His 1/2 day yesterday allowed us to go for lunch along the lake and to just enjoy a beautiful Saturday afternoon.  We ended our afternoon with a pint at Hofbrau.  It didn't quite taste like Germany's beer, but it was an escape from the apartment and a nice day to sit outside.

 Our compound is the block of buildings on the far left of the picture below.

This morning we interviewed 3 potential drivers for the 2nd time!  The first time Bill's company decided the cost was too high so we've been researching/jumping through hoops of fire to find cheaper companies and we finally are getting close to having a full time driver to get Bill to and from work vs taxi, train, taxi and then again taxi, train, taxi!  It will take a lot of stress out of his day so we are really looking forward to having a full time driver.  Our decision right now is between Mr. Fu and Mr. Wang, I will keep you posted on the outcome!

And now we have hit 5pm, it's still 80 degrees here and our brains are fried as we had a 2 hour Mandarin session.  (We typically go Monday mornings but again the holiday so we made it up today so our teacher can have off Mon/Tues/Wed.)  This stuff is hard!  The more words/phrases we learn the tougher the piecing together of sentences and memorization becomes.  We have 10 more sessions to go in Survival 1, I'm not sure if we'll graduate or not!

HAPPY SUNDAY TO ALL!

The Alien Employment Permit

On Friday Bill and I had to attend an interview at the Changzhou police/immigration office for his  ALIEN work permit and our residency permits.   Yep, we are considered aliens here!  That's a nice feeling. ha
Our day consisted of taking the train to Changzhou, a man from the immigration firm processing our documents picked us up at the train station and drove us to the immigration building.  Here's Bill waiting for a taxi outside our compound.  (He has a business meeting after this interview - hence the dress up clothes!)

 Lovely day outside the Changzhou train station.

 Going up the steps into the immigration building.

 Once we arrived and Sam parked his car we had to go across the street to get passport pictures taken.  Here's the across the street from the nice looking immigration building.

This picture place was crazy.  It's a hole in the wall building where you step down off the street and sit on a little box while some lady takes your picture.  Some man sits at a copy machine making copies of your passport and other information that only God knows what they will do with it.  

 There's Bill in the background - there were a lot of people in this tiny little place!

 The desk when you walk in!

 Neckties!

They even had pre tied neck ties in case a man needed one.  I was not allowed to wear my earrings, necklace or my cardigan for these pictures.  Very odd.  Bill and I figure the people running this shop are probably the brother/sister to one of the higher ranking government officials in a scam for the Chinese to make more money!
Finally we get back to the immigration/police station to start our interview process.  I'm not really sure if it was a police station or not, however all the employees were wearing uniforms with badges that stated in English "Police".

 That's the guard at the entrance smoking his cigarette. Yes, you can smoke inside buildings in China!

These are the chairs we had to sit in for our interview.  Bill went first and sat in front of the man, he did a lot of computer work, took Bill's picture and then took Bill's phone number and signature on a form that was all in Mandarin, I hope we didn't sign our lives away.   Then we were told - well Sam the immigration man was told that we didn't have the correct business license paperwork so Bill made a call to his Charter co-worker in Changzhou and we sat for an hour waiting for him to show up with the documents.  After an hour I told Sam I had booked a train ticket home at 3:45 so he asked the police man if I could do my interview and leave.  Bill had a work meeting and a dinner in Changzhou that evening so he was staying and I was flying solo home.

They agreed, thank goodness!  I got in the taxi with 25 minutes to spare before my train left the station and it took 20 minutes to get to the building - without traffic.  It was 3:25, traffic was CRAZY.  Luckily Sam told the taxi driver I was in a hurry so I had a wild ride and made it to the train station just as my train was arriving to the platform.  It's not everyday the Chinese in Changzhou see a Western woman running for a train! But I made it!

Hopefully in 5 days our passports will be back to us and we will have Alien Residency Permits and Bill will have an Alien Work Permit.  

Walmart

Walmart in any country never ceases to amaze me.  There are always the "crazy" people, the smell, the fact that it's Walmart really.  However, it's one of those places in China that has become a "go to" for the little things.

I needed oatmeal and Walmart is the cheapest place to get Quaker oatmeal so a bike ride for me was in store.  As I wandered through the isles here are some of the "oddball" items I came across.
Yes, raw chicken feet are sold here. (They're on ice.)
Yes, raw chickens are sold here. (They hang above processed chicken.)
Yes, the bird flu is still in China! (Oh and it's concentrated in the province that we live... Jiangsu.  But it's a big province so don't worry!)

Okay, moving on from the chickens!  The next isle I came across was the Dried Meat isle.  I'm sorry I didn't take any pictures of the packaging, I just really didn't like this isle.  Most of the packages look like super vacuum packed beef jerky type color but I know that's really not what's in there so I closed my eyes and kept on moving. 

Next up Dried Vegetables.  This isle is mainly dried mushrooms and seaweed.  Probably won't spend much time in either of these isles, ever! 

Anyone hungry for rice?  Don't worry there are 3 isles with HUGE bags of rice in all of them.  I'm pretty sure my ebike would bottom out due to the weight if I bought one of these bags and my other groceries to try to get home!

Good thing I'm not a fan of rice.  I wouldn't even know where to start to think about which bag to buy!
That's all for Walmart today.  I can only handle about 45 minutes in that place!

Please Exit on the Lefta Side

When riding the metro/subway in Shanghai do not be confused when the person on the train says.... "please exit from the lefta side".  They do mean to exit on the LEFT side even though they pronounce it "LEFT-A"!

On Wednesday 4 other expat ladies and myself took the train to Shanghai for an afternoon of shopping at the fabric mall and lunch!  Jill and Gini needed to get dirndls made for the Bavarian Mayfest coming up.  (Bill and I are out of town the weekend of the festival, otherwise I would've gotten a dirndl as well.)

One can get anything made at the fabric market.  This place is 3 stories tall and every floor has a little bit of everything.  Jackets, suits, scarfs, dresses, pants, skirts, jeans even!

You can also purchase watches, glasses, scarfs,sweaters, pajamas, pretty much anything you'd be looking for.   There is a fabric market in Suzhou, however with 3 stories in Shanghai and the fact that Gini and Jill needed a specialty item, Shanghai was the way to go.

Plus lunching in Shanghai is always a great time.  We went to this place called Element Fresh which has fantastic salads, sandwiches, fresh juice drinks which we are not able to find in Suzhou.  Being ladies of leisure we of course needed to stop at the Big Bamboo for an afternoon cocktail.

And as our day was ending we returned to the metro line to get back to the Shanghai Railway Station to catch our train to Suzhou.  Rush hour on the metro in any city is crazy, in China as a group of 5 white women, man did we get some strange looks!

Shared Gym Sandals

Bill and I are members of the Alexander Club - Health and Fitness Club here in Suzhou.

The facilities are very nice for China standards and just so ~ so to American standards.
Here's a picture of the treadmills inside the gym.  And my view of the pool from the treadmill.

One thing that really baffles me is when you walk into the locker rooms you are suppose to take your shoes off and put them in a shoe locker.  Inside the shoe locker are sandals that one is suppose to wear around the locker room, in the shower and in the pool.  I understand the thought/concept of taking off your shoes especially going into a pool/shower area.  Even more so now because here in China the outside world is quite dirty and you never know what you're stepping in.  However, when you're done using these sandals you return them to the same shoe locker and leave the gym.

I don't know about you but I'm not really keen on putting my feet into sandals that other people wear on and off all day long.  To be fair I did see the cleaning lady once hosing the sandals off with water in a red bucket and then placing them back into the lockers.  Soooo just a wash with water is all these sandals get!  A level of cleanliness and comfort I'm not willing to participate in.  Although as I think twice about it I'm not sure what's worse - sandals other people wear or walking barefoot from the pool through the showers to my locker.  I figure I'm going into a chlorine filled pool so I'm okay going in, it's the getting out and back to my locker so I can get home and scrub my feet that worries me!

Blue Clothes... AGAIN!!!

Okay I'm not going to lie, I really enjoy the fact that I have a washing machine and a separate dryer!  I didn't have a dryer in England the past 2 and 1/2 years so I'm really enjoying having both now.  Whew, finally a positive thing about China!  However, this positive is causing me some grief today!

When we first moved into the apartment our real estate agent gave me the low down on the meanings and I wrote them down on a cheat sheet.  I've been doing all the loads on "Cotton 45" because well that seemed reasonable in timing(2 hours) and most of our clothes are cotton.  The other settings are all over 3 hours and I can't be bothered to have wash in the machine for 3 hours!!!
A few weeks ago every single piece of clothing that went into the washer magically decided to turn a nice shade of blue.  Mom, I know you told me never to mix whites and darks but I didn't listen that day or today and well I didn't think it'd be a problem since every piece of clothing has been washed multiple times!  Don't forget we've been wearing the same clothes since Dec 10th for crying out loud, how in the world did they become blue now?!?!

The first time this happened I thought maybe I had the machine on a setting that was wrong... maybe I soaked them in detergent on accident, or maybe I put in too much detergent, something I had to have done wrong.  However, I've been keeping the machine on the same setting for the past 3 weeks and it happened again!  We must have some stow away smurfs in the washer because I certainly can't figure it out!  

Do you like my cheat sheet?  I keep this on the kitchen counter next to the back door so I NEVER forget what setting I want!

Fine Dining at Papa John's

A Papa John's with sit down dining, I've never seen this before!  At least not in Wisconsin.

Bill and I have a tradition that we started in England of having pizza on Sunday's.  It all came about because we couldn't find any good take away pizza and really craved a nice "American thick crust".  We decided not to succumb to the traditional British Sunday Roast as we normally just wanted to relax at home and pig out on pizza!  So after much trial and error Bobby Flay's recipe became our best friend and Sunday's in our home because pizza days where we relaxed watched tv, drank vino and enjoyed homemade pizzas!

Being in China without our shipment yet means it's pretty hard to make that homemade crust without the proper utensils and the ingredients!  However, we've found Papa John's here and it actually tastes like Papa John's at home.  If you go to the store it's actually pretty "fine dining" experience. hehe
In Wisconsin I've never seen a Papa John's where one could actually go sit down to order their meal.  Here in China some of the locations have white table clothes, you can order drinks, appetizers, pizza, pasta and even dessert!   We decided we should give it a go just to say we've actually dined IN at a Papa John's restaurant.  The restaurant we went to didn't have white linen table clothes but it still was a pretty nice place.   They even put the garlic sauce in small white dipping trays on your table versus the plastic take away containers!

It was a fun Sunday night date for us at Papa John's.

I'm in Need of Odor Eaters!

China Stinks!  That statement is a double-edged sword these days, but for this blog entry I literally mean this country here stinks as in smells really bad!!!  The minute you walk off a plane in China you immediately know you're in China by the smell.  I can't even explain it, you just have to come experience it for yourself.  I know I'm painting a great picture here and everyone wants to jump on a plane to come smell China.  I'm pretty sure Bill and I also smell like China now, so this is the warning...   when I get back to the US don't tell me how bad I smell just help me buy knew clothes or completely disinfect the current ones I'm wearing when I land!

Unfortunately our apartment also stinks, however it the drains.  So if the air smell/quality isn't bad enough our apartment smells like "cabbage" as we call it.   This smell is due to the drains!  We have drains in the showers and then drains next to the toilets and as we've found out, none of the drains have pea traps on them!   Yep we live in the 22nd floor and you can waft the sewer smell from all the other apartments, it's just glorious.   Typically it's just morning and evenings, not sure why, but that's what it is.  Today it's rainy and I'm just making an assumption that it might have something to do with the fact that all day long we've been smelling "stinky cabbage".  I've resorted to soaking dryer sheets in bleach and stuffing them in the drains, then covering them with another dryer sheet and the toilet bowl cleaner.  It doesn't seem to help today with the rain, most other days it seems to work!   

Here's a picture of the plugged toilet drain and the shower drain.  

I also plan to purchase urinal disks when I get to the US to put in our drains to see if it helps block the horrible smells.  If you want to come visit definitely stay away from rainy season and wait until we get our shipment so I can put candles in every room!!!  Just another day in China! 

Tian Tan Buddha

Tian Tan Buddha... aka Giant Buddha is located at Ngong Ping on Lantau Island in Hong Kong.  It is one of the 5 largest buddha's in China.  This buddha symbolizes the harmonious relationship between man and nature and people and religion.
In order to get the buddha the best ways are to either take a cable car or the local bus.  We decided to ride the cable car on the way there and take the bus back into town.   Here are some views from the cable car.

Once you get to Ngong Ping where the Buddha is there are 268 steps to reach the top.  The Buddha is 112ft tall and weights 250 metric tons!  Prior to 2007 it was the largest one in the world.  This Buddha is also the only Buddha that faces north, all the others face south.   His right hand is raised symbolizing removal of affliction.  The Buddha sits on a lotus throne and is surrounded by 6 smaller bronze statues known as "The Offering of the 6 Devas" and are posed offering flowers, incense, lamp, ointment, fruit and music to the Buddha. The offerings symbolize charity, morality, patience, zeal, mediation and wisdom which are all necessary to enter into nirvana.
I was amazed at all the people climbing the steps... all shapes, sizes and ages! It's quite an impressive tourist attraction.

Near to the Buddha on Ngong Ping is the Po Lin Monastery.  It was currently undergoing some construction/renovation but had many places where one could light incense and pray around the monastery and Buddha.

It was quite a site to see and to think about how they got the Buddha placed where he is.