Green tea scented toilet paper.

i never knew this was possible but there is green tea scented toilet paper here! now not only can i ingest my favorite tea in the world when i drink it, i can infuse it into my body thru my bottom! yay for Kleenex! i was thinking what a waste it would be if i had TP'd people's houses with this back in grade school. :)

little Marissa again.

7.5 oz and 20.5 inches long. she sure has alot of hair for a newborn. did i mention she looks like her daddy? :) wow, the resemblance is striking. btw, why do babies always look so disgruntled?

where's waldo?

look closely...

look closer...

ah..there's waldo (or dave)!

when you make it on a subway poster in china, you're a superstar! well, to me at least!

pre-birthday excitement post.

may 4 square--a famous qingdao icon

YES, i know people usually wait til their birthday is over and then tell all about and how much fun they had but the anticipation of it all was just too exciting for me! essentially, i am celebrating my birthday a week in advance--mentally that is. :)

for my 32nd birthday (i know chicks aren't supposed to reveal their age but at this age who gives a fuck!), we're going to Qingdao or people may know it as Tsingdao. They are best known for their beer, which i personally think tastes worse than horse piss, but i heard at their brewery, they have tons of variations and for 50rmb, you get loads of alcohol and a museum tour. the town has german influence all over b/c it used to be a german colony, hence the brewery. the sailing portion of the beijing olympics was held there. doing the research thus far on the sights we want to see, it seems to be primarily temples (well, it IS china), parks, churches and cathedrals, beaches (YAY!), and the bars and the famous brewery plus the former governor's residence which is of german architecture and made from a couple taels of silver! i checked the weather forecast and it doesn't look good but if luck is on our side, the weather man will be wrong, as he usually is and it won't rain. if it does, there are tons of indoor places to check out or we can just dance in the rain! we just booked rooms at the first 5 star hotel in the Shandong province at the Grand Regency Hotel Qingdao. i can't say i've ever stayed at a 5 star anything before. we will be out there 5 nights and dave is hoping to find a beer stein of some sort. pictures to follow of course... :)

is there a better way to commemorate or forget your 32nd b'day than drowning the memories in a drunken haze of qingdao beer?

carre"for" the lose.

i decided to be brave and head over to Carrefour, a French-originated hypermarket. i was really hoping it was like a chinese walmart where i could get some hangers and other stuff for cheap. it was a bad idea. i had to switch subway lines, and the wait for line 4 was at least 10 minutes, which is unprecedented. that line has always been really slow. i think it's b/c it's a circular track. so i got to the ZhongShan subway stop, where carrefour was. i asked 2 people where it was and they begrudgingly pointed in some general direction. i ended up at Cloud 9 mall, where carrefour was on B1 and B2 levels. i was on level 2 and asked customer service where carrefour was. she said just take the escalator one level down. well that was not entirely correct b/c that would leave me at level 1. after looking at the tons of signs, i realized i needed to go 1 more level down. i couldn't find the escalators going down so i opted for the elevator. not only did the elevator not take me to B1 and B2, where carrefour was, i ended up twice on B3, the steamy stinky parking garage and was stuck in the awfully hot and crowded elevator. i did not understand why the elevator refused to go to B1 and B2! so i tried to take stairs but the doors were bolted shut where it should have opened up to carrefour. i went back up and asked a security guard where the damn store was. it is usually at this point that i regret even trying to find a place. he pointed me in a general direction, i finally found the escalators going down and when i saw carrefour and realized it was not like walmart but rather, was a large, messy, crowded, and not all that cheap chinese supermarket (sorta like 99 ranch market back home), i was soooo disappointed and remorseful i ever left my house. i purchased some overpriced pelligrino (cus i am so craving bubbly water), choc chip cookies, skim milk, some red bean drink, coconut yogurt drink and got in a really long line behind this old man who was trying to get in 2 lines to see which one was shorter and annoyed the crap out of me. it's like pick a goddamn line mister! i lugged the really heavy drinks around in my backpack and headed on home. this was all in at least 90something degree heat. all the makings of annoyance were mixed in today and i came home smelly and grumpy. but now i'm sipping on my box of red bean soy bean drink and sitting in a cool room and it's all ok now.

Marissa Gabrielle Chow.

i think she looks like a boy but that's ok. she looks exactly like her older brother when he came out of the womb. they both look like their daddy. she was born on June 20, 2009 at 8:50pm. She took only 50 minutes to come out of her mommy's tummy. my sister didn't even get to use an epidural or pain meds and said it was super-painful but at least quick. she only had to push 3 or 4 times then out came marissa. i think she was about 5 days late. i don't have the specs but as soon as i find out, i will share. i'm just happy everything went ok and everyone is safe and sound.

welcome to this crazy world marissa gabrielle.

not the longest chopstick in the bunch.

so every village has to have an idiot, right?

well, so does every large chinese city! here's my theory on why i am probably considered by locals as "not the longest chopstick in the bunch."

i look like a local. i kinda act like one too. but when i open my mouth, my vocabulary is that of a 2nd grade student (is my guess). when they start talking to me, i can't really understand what they probably consider basic language and vocab. i go, "what?" and ask for clarification. then they realize, "this girl isn't too bright. why doesn't she know what i'm talking about?" i don't really tell them i'm from the US b/c i want them to think i'm local so they won't take advantage of me. well, that becomes problemmatic b/c their expectations of me don't match my actual abilities. which leads to the conclusion: i ain't too bright.

ABCs have it tough in china. our slanted eyes and yellow skin color works against us. on one hand, i want to blend in to avoid being scammed, but i can't quite pull it off, as locals soon find out. on the other hand, if i broadcast i'm not from here, they might be more forgiving about my lack of comprehension and give better explanations of things, but they may take advantage of me.

i compare it to this: if I was in the states and this caucasian person who looks like they are from CA comes up to me and starts talking but his vocab is really poor and he doesn't really understand what i'm saying, i'm gonna think, few fries short of a happy meal, my friend? i mean, i work with those sorts of people; patients that is. :)

thus is my quandary. i am hereby the village idiot.

Some interesting village idiot definitions

Duties of the village idiot (none of which I do)

wrong restaurant, right food.

before

after

ok i realize this is a horribly fat picture of me whereby i look like i could engulf sarah but you know what they say about plump people...they have plump hearts!!

i told sarah i wanted to try shanghainese cuisine this week. so we were looking for a restaurant called Xin Wang on Hong Qiao road near my house that served a mix of SH and cantonese cuisine. we got to the right elevator but went to the wrong floor. after looking at the menu for recommended items that sarah had written on a small post-it, i looked at the menu cover and asked her what it said. She said it said Yuan Yuan and that was NOT Xin Wang, the restaurant we wanted! we were confused b/c we saw the sign saying Xin Wang before we got into the elevator. we later learned that Xin Wang was on the 3rd fl and Yuan Yuan was on the 2nd! we got off on the wrong floor. after we ate, we went to take a look at the intended restaurant and the food kinda looked the same. no worries b/c the food we ate was super duper gooood, esp. the spicy Hunan-ish beef dish, the bokchoy w mushrooms, and the lion head meatball soup. and a big pot of chrysanthemum tea!

even though it was the wrong restaurant, it was definitely the right food!

massage me...ALL of me.

today i got my very first chinese massage. i mean in the most literal sense. masseuse lady was from yunnan, which is a very far away town near tibet, and it was at a local massage parlour, which was of course misspelled on their business card, Jin Jiu Sheng Foot Massage Centrum. i nearly thought she was going to give me a "happy ending" or "special services" without charging me extra. for a petite, small lady, she had major and i mean MAJOR man hands. well they looked nice and delicate but what came to mind was Donkey Kong fists. a couple times i had to ask her to ease up b/c i was in major pain. it was cool cus i tailored my massage. i told her, harder there, softer there, more there.. she was very compliant too! she did every part of my body, and i mean EVERY part. at one point she was massaging my butt (and i forgot the butt has muscles that get sore too), my boobs (kinda) and got pretty dang close to my cooch. she like brushed it while massaging my inner thighs. overall, it was a great 1 hr massage and very affordable at 58kuai/hr, which is just over $8 USD. we exchanged a few questions and she was like, you don't talk like you are from here. in other words, my chinese sucketh. :) but at least she was polite about it. when i asked her what her name was so i could request her next time, the saddest thing was, she didn't even tell me, she just pointed to her name tag and said "I am #10."

well thanks for the hard work, #10. can you make me go #2? :P~~

it's all a blur.

couldn't this be construed as racist?

my camera doesn't take very good pictures without natural daylight. this is kinda how i imagine a very glaucomic person's view to be. :P

Malaysian yumminess!

i had malaysian food for the first time yesterday at My Nyonya Gallery Authentic Malaysian Cuisine Restaurant and Cafe on DaGu Lu. to me, it tastes like a mix of thai and chinese, which makes perfect sense. i really enjoyed the beef curry you see in the picture. the fried noodles would have been good if they had more flavor. i had coconut rice, which was slightly coconut flavored rice. the "morning glory," or garlic kongxingchai (hollow root veggies) was awesome! lastly, the curry puff (curry filled fried pastry) wasn't as good as i thought it would be. my coworker Mandy loves this place. i would have to say the morning glory and curry were my faves. plus i had malaysian milk tea, which tasted like any other milk tea i've had. after we ate, she showed me her apartment, which is on the 6th fl but you could see for miles and i got to play with her retriever, asahi. it brought me so much joy to romp around with a canine. we walked around the park across the street where asahi played with a bunch of crazy small pooches, mostly furry dogs like poodles, pekingnese, and shitzus. mandy tells me there is a double standard with canines here. the little ones get to be off leash but the big ones don't. ironically the big ones are more well behaved. there are no real dog parks here in SH but owners do makeshift ones on lawns. and dogs can't play at the park, they can only walk thru them, but since it was night time, no guards were really on duty. we also walked around her complex which has a lake in the middle and gazebos that take you to the parking structure below. there was also a restaurant in her complex. DaGu Lu is a pretty convenient street to live on!

foreigner wing? what foreigner wing?

i went to Guangci Memorial Hospital today and it supposedly had a "foreigner wing" but there was nothing foreigner about it. there were no Western doctors, the chinese doc i had spoke some english but didn't communicate in english with me and all the patients were chinese. it was a typical chinese hospital. ok i saw one white guy. it was so hard to find, the taxi driver dropped me off somewhere far and random and it was like 50000% humidity today and i was trekking around in it. then the dr told me things i already knew so i insisted on yes..a colonoscopy to rule things out. she resisted, telling me bian mi is common but i said no, i am concerned it's more. the grand total would be a little over 3ooo rmb, which is much cheaper than US prices but i would be anesthetized and i don't trust them with my lifeless body. after much deliberation, i decided to go elsewhere where i can understand the procedures, the doctor and hopefully get non local care and a 3rd opinion. i'm trying not to be elitest and trying to be a local but it's my colon and i want to know everything that will happen and be extra clear before leaving my life and butt in their hands.

LuWan District.

i wandered around LuWan District after my strange and disappointing Dr. visit. More to come on that topic. First, the fotos! This is the district where the Communist party first set up shop, where Sun Yat Sen's house is, and where XTD and TianZiFang is.

i really like peeking into people's backyards and i really like alleyways. it's so old school china.

Luwan district is located directly south of People's Square. The northern part of Luwan includes one of the best sections of Huaihai Road, famous for its international fashion shops and high-class restaurants.

Luwan is a part of the old French Concession area, one of the most prestigious sections of the city. It is famous for its boulevards. The plane trees lining the main streets were imported from France over 100 years ago. The district includes the historical residences ofSun Yat-sen, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Agnes Smedley and Mei Lanfang, among others.

The district is named after "Lujia Wan", literally "Lu's Bay", formerly a bend in a local river which has since been covered up. The name survives in bus stops located near the former location of the bay. Known as Lukawei during the French concession period, this was the location of the main police depot and prison of the French Concession.

Tokidoki!

i've been wanting one FOREVER but the prices in the US are so unaffordable. well today as i was wandering i saw tokidoki purses in the store window, went inside and picked my very first and hopefully not last TOKIDOKI purse from LeSportSac!! it's amazing how much joy 78rmb can bring. :)