Take Care of the Teenager

I've seen whole New York Times articles on how many oddly translated phrases there are in China but this is probably the best one I've seen so far. I took the number 23 bus back downtown again to try to get some of the things I missed the first time and to just look around. I noticed that people gave up there seats to the elderly, I wasn't sure if they did that in China, and sometimes to women with children. The buses seem to have little TV's on them that show various programs, this bus was showing a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The older man next to me was getting a kick out of it. I meet one of my neighbors on the 14th floor a German woman with her maybe 5 or 6 year old daughter who didn't really speak English but looked at me curiously when I said "gutentage." Downtown I saw a rather large mosque/restaurant which surprised me so much the first time I saw it I thought I was seeing things.

I went to Wal-Mart again and got some milk and butter, it's really hard to find any dairy products in China. On my way out I passed a McDonalds and just couldn't resist. It was pretty expensive by Chinese standards about 3 dollars. There was only one size and it was about the smallest size you can get in America. They seemed to be giving out little toys with the happy meals proving that even in China kids like little pieces of plastic crap from China.

Back in my room I was just turning on some light when one of the light bulbs exploded. Now you may be thinking I meant burned out, but no it exploded as in I found pieces all around my room. This of course tripped the circuit breaker and all the power in my room went off. The front desk, I live in a functional hotel remember, was able to send some repair people up to fix the power the no one seemed to be in any hurry about finding another light bulb. I finally got around to doing some laundry which works fine expect the drier goes for about one minute then abruptly shuts itself off and refuses to turn on for a good 2o minutes, so I have cloths hanging all over my room now. I made mashed potatoes for dinner which was a little messy but a lot of fun and came out really well. I updated flickr again and you should be able to see a slide show of pictures on the blog to boot.