stranger in a strange land

today the hills around fuzhou are visible and they are indeed lovely. in just a few days a small corner of this metropolis of 6 million has become familiar to me. i can make my way to the store, cross the street and emerge intact and not even that scared on the other side, greet the stares and galking with “ni hao” or “hello” and keep walking. it is a little hard to get used to the motorbikes and motorized vehicles of all sorts on the sidewalk, but even that doesn’t seem that strange now. they are so loud that you can hear the putting, sputtering and zooming of the various kinds of vehicles coming behind you and stay out of harms way. but there are so many experiences that remind me that i am a fish out of water.

shopping- i know it sounds like we are always shopping but you have to have water and pringles ( today’s flavor was spicy thai crab- mmm) not to mention diapers wipers and baby stuff. the system here is quite comical when viewed from the a/c of the hotel. in the moment it can be a sweaty, pushy , comical and frazzling experience. always worth some giggles.

first you have to find the department you want. when you decide what you want to purchase you have to give it to the sales clerk who has been trailing you along with 8 of her friends. she places your item behind a small counter in her section and then gives you a carbon price sheet in triplicate that you then take to the main cashier to pay for. then you return to her counter and she gives you the item in a bag with a carbon stapled to the outside. (this will of course be diligently checked by the door guarder lest you should try to leave with an item unpaid for.) imagine how much time it takes to get things in several departments when you are making trips back and forth to the main cashier and the little counters!

yesterday i decided that i had to get some kids shoes. despite the fact that much of china is somber and not very stylin’, the shoes here are awesome. if only they made them in barbarian adult sizes! i’d need another suitcase for sure. as always there was music playing overhead. the music selection here in china is an essay in and of itself, so i will save that for another time. as i was choosing shoes i noticed that the song playing overhead was “i saw you and her walking in the rain”. hmmmm. i have heard this song many times in china this trip- it was what mr shen blasted for us in the car on the way here. those of you who know me well know that i never dance unless under the influence of some serious alcohol. well i couldn’t help myself, with hazel in the sling, i started dancing in aisle of the chinese department store. imagine my surprise when the song kept playing over and over and over. britta is convinced that there was a big brother camera somewhere and the employees were gathered to watch a foreigner dance.

hazel is emerging more and more each day. she is very different than ruby - ruby took one look at me, knew i was a good thing and has not looked back. hazel is making me work hard for her smiles and i although i know that her close relationship with miss chen was a good thing, its harder to get her to engage with me since i am most definitely not miss chen! today we skipped the sightseeing , and spent some down time together. we took a bath listening to pink martini. ate and practiced walking. hazel has a little groove and was dancing in front of the mirror.

when she wakes up, it may be time to brave another trip to the store- with all that carbon paper floating around its easy to forget things!