Things You Should Know...

For this post we thought we'd compile a list of things that our friends and family back home should be aware of...you know, after going four months without seeing someone, they tend to change a little. So here are some updates on our life here, how we've changed, or random stories we'd like to share. So here it is: The Things You Should Know (in no particular order)...

- Before coming to China we never EVER ate eggplant (at least not that we were aware of). Now, it is a common staple any time we eat out.
- We love our apartment. Considering what we have to work with, we've really grown attached to our little concrete abode. For example: we may never go back to the showering with walls concept. Trust us, if you've never showered in a wall-less shower where you get water on the entire bathroom floor, toilet, & washing machine (yes our washing machine is in our bathroom too) you should definitely try it. It's so freeing. And our little contraption that we hang clothes on so that they can dry is brilliant! No more shrinking sweaters in the dryer folks!
- We accidentally told our friend yesterday that last week our home town got 18 kilometers of snow. Centimeters and Kilometers, sheeeesh, crazy metric system!
- We've got five Dr. Peppers sitting behind several cans of asparagus in our kitchen. We're rationing them for really special occasions. We thought hiding them behind the canned vegetables might take our mind off of them...but we're both fully aware of their existence.
- We wish we would have had our camera with us last night. We went out to eat with a friend and she ordered mashed potatoes! We didn't even know we could order that here! Much to our surprise though the mashed potatoes came with a heavy cream on top tasting much to similar to vanilla icing and on top of that were pink, blue, & white "sprinkles." It looked like a cute little cake, but it didn't taste like a cake. It tasted just like mashed potatoes with vanilla icing & sprinkles.
- Our favorite restaurant back home would never be one where you eat boiled beef or boiled lettuce. I know, sounds weird. However, it's our favorite restaurant here. It's delicious! Find some thinly sliced beef, some boiling water, and a concoction resembling peanut butter, olive oil, & sesame seeds & you've got yourself the best Hot Pot Restaurant ever!
- We've not driven a car (or well, anything for that matter) in 4 months. May not sound that long, but when you go from doing it every day to nothing at all, it's a little strange. So yesterday when Brandon heard our taxi driver say, "Would you like to drive my car?" (only in chinese), Brandon said, "YES!" But alas...when the taxi driver got a strange look on his face, we realized we'd misunderstood him saying, "Have you ever driven a car before?" Surely it wasn't because Brandon misunderstood him. We think it's just because he's going through car-driving withdrawals & is hearing things. bummer
- Fu Mart started playing Christmas songs a couple weeks ago. We've even heard the little kid version of Silent Night played a few times! But our favorite song we've heard in there goes a little something like this: "Mamasita, donde esta Santa Claus?" Really flew us for a loop when we heard another different language!
- As long as we're on the subject of Spanish, it seems it's trying to creep it's way back into our lives. Yesterday our taxi driver had stickers all over the dash with phrases in Spanish. We asked if he understood them but he didn't...so we did some translating. It probably wasn't all the way right, but what does he know! Anyhow, we had tutoring the other day and one of our words was "juan" (roll, as in a roll of toilet paper). So she asks us to read through our vocab words and we come to this one and both say, "Juan" (huan) as in Juan, Jose, Jorge, you get the idea. But in chinese it's pronounced jhuan. So she thought we were a little retarded for a second there but after giving her a little spanish lesson it was all cleared up. And then as we were leaving class she asked us how to say bye in Xi Ban Ya (spanish) and we seriously could come up with nothing. All of our spanish had disappeared at that moment and the only thing that came out was still Chinese.


ok sorry that was a little long for a post...but oh well. if you read it all..."Muy Bueno!"