Dearest readers,
Today was day two of my epic adventure, fear not, eventually I will stop counting. I woke up this morning with a cut on my arm, from some broken glass at the bar yesterday evening. Ah well, such is life. We had a fabulous time getting to know each other as well as discussing business. Apparently, my foreignness is a total lure around here. I had drinks sent my way, and some Chinese lessons from my co-workers as well as the very handsome bartender (who gave me his digits, yeah, fear my awesome). But enough about last night.
This morning, I got the lovely opportunity to walk around with Sophia, the Chinese woman who found my internship, and whom I owe many thanks to for helping make this possible. We started our day off by taking two separate buses to get to a Taoist temple in the heart of the city. Once there, we paid 10 yuan to go in. That is after of course going through two bottles of orange juice (they just make the stuff so much better tasting over here). Sophia and I chatted while looking at the different parts of the old temple with a touristic flair (they had a gift shop, pfft). There is nothing I like more than the smell of something burning, and there was a prominent incense smell that was literally everywhere in the temple. We arrived at one building where we met a fortune teller who was noshing on some kind of vegetable, my guess would be tarot. So, I bent down on my knees and threw up a request for good weather from the statue (I am not big on prayer). I had to shake a vase of sticks with different writing on them and pick one. I picked a nice one in the middle mind you it was in Chinese, so I had no idea what it said. He used it to tell my fortune apparently my luck is great according to him as well as the Twister game from the previous day, so looks like I have some pretty damn good luck (go me).
Following the temple we went to a roadside stand, which had I been in change I never would have picked. We ordered some crazy good noodles, I am legitimately so glad she didn’t ask me where to eat. I then preceded to buy a Pepsi Max, they do not seem to believe in Diet Coke here, or for that matter diet anything. Since today was so gorgeous we decided to walk for most of the day. We stopped in some little park that looked kind of like a low-end amusement park, which was pleasant. We walked down to one of the oldest streets in Chengdu, and did some window shopping in the tea shops as well as buying a cute inexpensive phone strap for my Chinese cell phone (yes, I am now officially one of those tools who carries not one, but two cell phones every where I go).
We continued to walk down to an area with a place called Wide-Narrow street (that is how its translated anyway). An area that consists of three streets one wide, one narrow and one just right (go figure, Goldilocks was actually on to something). We decided to stop for some afternoon tea, which we took outside in a little pseudo-American cafe’s courtyard. We were once again exchanging words English for Chinese, I explained the different American dialects, she found Boston extremely humorous, as oh so many of us often do. As we sat there, I had a slew of well lets call them admirers, for lack of a better term. JBeibs, watch out I will be more famous than you, well in China at least. So after some not so stealthily taken pictures, and a good, not nearly-as-relaxing-as-it-should-have-been time soaking in some sun, we decided to hit the street, hail a cab, and head on home.
As it is only just past 5 p.m. now, I have no idea what my evening will entail. I am hoping to go out, being around people is kinda my version of retail therapy, only much less costly and/or productive. Perhaps I will give that nice bartender a ring, just kidding. Well, it has been a pleasure keeping all of you informed about my happenings, I am going to go see if I can go goad Kiki into hanging out with me tonight.
Hugs, Kisses, all that jazz,
Abby
No comments:
Post a Comment