Grocery Shopping- So Blake and I have made it to Metro (German Store), Carrefour (French Store), and our local market this week to get items for our new home. Its been quite the experience as you seem to learn where you can get certain things, because not every store has the same imported items! I have found the market near our house is great for some cleaning items, fresh fruit and vegetables, they don't seem to carry bread, but you can get lots of oil there! Metro has a lot of imported items such as potato chips, refried beans and tortillas, cheese, and bread! Carrefour was a massive two-story store we visited that has everything from household items, to personal hygiene to groceries. I was able to get ice cream (i thought i bought mint but was green tea flavor), ground beef which i had to pick out a hunk of beef and then ask them to grind it for me, the man proceeded to chop it up with a cleaver, then wash it in the sink, then put it through the grinder, but it made good hamburgers! So every day this week i have been able to make dinners from home with the ingredients i have found :) We also found buttered pop secret popcorn and its way better than at home, Brian and I are addicted!!!
Cell Phone: My cell phone seems to be the biggest thorn in my side and the people working at the China Mobile store don't speak English. So this morning for the second time since we have been in China I tried to make a phone call and I got a recording saying "Your phone service has been suspended" how lovely for me. It seems when you get this you can still receive phone calls and text messages but nothing outgoing. From what i am understanding you can get a package for your phone in China, but it must start at the beginning of the month so last month i had to basically pay for what i used which is much more expensive but still cheaper that the States. Today i found out i hadn't paid enough for my month to start the package i selected, so my friends from Brian's office went with me to assist in speaking to the phone company and i think i might have some text messages, phone calls, and data (they call it wi-fi) hopefully I can keep the service going for an entire month this time. Its very tiring to go some where and not understand what they are saying, it seems as though you are the first person asking for this ever and it takes 3 times as long as it would at home, so going out with an 18 month old isn't much fun!
Bank: Apparently it is an act of god to get money from the US to China and have it converted to RMB which is the local currency. I spent 1 1/2 hours on Sunday trying to get the money out of our account to pay the landlord. First of all the first branch we went to wasn't willing to help us so after 20 minutes of my interpreter talking to them we find out we need to go to the branch i opened the account. Once we get to the correct Bank it took asking permission from the manager to get the USD converted to RMB on a weekend, apparently they don't like to do this even though the Bank is open. Then we had to get special permission to convert more than 5000 rmb which is less than $1000. I had to see three different people as they are in different "departments" but the bank is a very small box, and sign off on everything each time. Then to ask to transfer the money to the landlords account was too much, we cashed the money out and took him cold hard cash....and i was exhausted! On a side note: in China they really like to stamp things, they have metal stamps that go in red ink and they aggressively stamp all paperwork from the bank! I think the workers really enjoy it!
Next attempts: To get an Ayi ( to help clean the house) and get ingredients for chocolate chip cookies!
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