Last night was a series of unsuccessful events … in optimistic language it would be called a series of learning experiences. Walking back from the CDC (another story) I asked Amy if she wanted to go to a movie. Not shy of any challenge she accepted. A few hours later we were on a bus to the Times Plaza where we had heard there are two movie theaters. With popcorn and Pirates of the Caribbean on our minds we walked the streets until; through a bit of sign language with a woman on the street, we found the movie house! Yeah. And Pirates of the Caribbean was playing in a few theaters. Great! So we got the help of another young woman with the knowledge of a few words of English to help us get tickets. She kept on saying, “Talk, talk.” That didn’t make any sense to us so we proceeded to try to buy the tickets. Finally she said, “No English!” And at that point all of our dreams of seeing a movie faded away. They had dubbed over Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp with Chinese voices! If we hadn’t been so depressed we might have actually bought the tickets just to be amused by the dubbed over voices.
By that point we hadn’t eaten so eating was to be the next adventure.
KFC. This would not have been an option in the U.S. but we thought at least we could find something resembling food there. All of the advertisements were in English but… the menu was all in Chinese. This was very unhelpful to us. We walked out dejected. We passed by all of the street vendors and at one point the food on the sticks actually looked good. We resolved that the next restaurant that wasn’t hotpot would be the place we ate. About 10 minutes later after passing many cheap shoe stores (that Amy was dying to go into) we found a little hole in the wall place. We sat down and the women cooking waved her hands at us. Apparently she didn’t have any food even though there were people in there eating her food. Oh well… on to the next place. We found a McDonald's, which again would not have been an option in the U.S. and strike two… the menu was all Chinese! Walking out yet again we found a Chinese restaurant that we had been to before. So with a sigh of relief we sat down, pulled out our notebook that has an entire repertoire of our “favorite” dishes written in Chinese, and proceed to try to order what we wanted. A few minutes later I received a huge dish full of fried rice and pork! Most of you know that I am a vegetarian and in the notebook the order specifically said, “Bu yao zro (no meat)”. I showed this again to the waitress and she giggled nervously and hesitantly took the dish back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that she was standing near the kitchen with my dish and all of the servers congregated around her discussing my dish. At first I thought they were just going to bring it back to me but then they took it back to the kitchen. Later it came out with only a few bits of meat in it! They had proceeded to just pick out the meat and give it back to me. I’m not complaining… at least I didn’t have to do it! There were still a few mysterious bits of meat left but with my mad chopstick skills I put them to the side and ate up! Amy got the “rolls only served in the spring” (Spring rolls) and they arrived in all their fried glory! She’s been wanting them for a while and asking for them everywhere so I think she got them out of her system last night!
A change of events happened as we went back through McDonald's and noticed the ice cream cones. The cashier brought out an English menu for us and we pointed to the ice cream cone and asked for two. We sat outside, watched people walk by in their gorgeous dresses and high heals, and ate our wonderful .50 cent vanilla ice cream cones. We looked at our arm clocks and it was about 9:45. The bus stopped running at 8 so we had two options—walking or finding a cab. We had walked back before but it took us over an hour and we only had a general sense of where “home” was. At any other time during the day we would have chosen that option. But the mosquitoes were out and wanted to eat us so we opted for the cabs. We tried for about 30 minutes to get a cab along the very busy road. Desperately we walked to other streets to find a cab. Finally another young woman stopped us and pointed to the end of the street at the corner. She was speaking in Chinese (obviously) and I immediately said, “Wo bu ming by” (I don’t understand). But she insisted and finally I understood that she was telling us that we could find a cab at the end of the street. She was right! The cab driver took us right to the gate of the Huaxi campus and I arrived in my dorm room with a few minutes to 11! After a much needed shower I jumped into bed to watch some consolation tv!
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