Saturday, January 14, 2012
Morning
Big plans today, just like last Saturday—going shopping to pick up a few things to make life better. We were starting to run out of money, so I also need to figure out the ATM situation. After discussing it, we decided it would be better to leave Tracy home, as she is getting increasingly frustrated at the transportation situation (subway is reliable but WAY to crowded for her, and taxis are hard to find at times, and it’s hard to be sure if we are going the most reasonable route or not). So, off I set. First stop, to find an ATM. Didn’t turn out to be too hard, though. After a quick internet search, I learned that there are four banks that allow international transactions. I found one of their ATMs at the west end of the mall that is below the hotel. Mission accomplished! Next, I set out to find a specific store in a mall about 30 minutes away, because it had been recommended to me as having the VGA cable I needed to hook the computer to the TV. Found the mall and the store, and got the cable. Sweet! Next, I headed about halfway back home, and walked two blocks to a Wal-Mart (turns out they have about five here) that seemed to be convenient to the subway, but in reality was about a half a mile. Anyway, I bought a humidifier and some speakers for the computer—now we’re in business! We can hook up the computer to the TV and watch DVDs or Netflix, something that we could only do in the bedroom with our headphones to this point. Life is good!
Afternoon
After lunch, Tracy and I walked down to Wangfujing Street on the west side of our hotel. This has many shops, and we stopped at a bookstore to get some hong bao. These are red envelopes that the Chinese hand out at the New Year to give money to family or people that work for them. I needed them to hand out to my folks on Monday, since they’re getting their annual bonuses. We came back to the apartment to chill for a bit, and then got ready to go to dinner with the Relief Society president and her husband. And that’s when the fun began.
Our taxi driver took us to the wrong location—not his fault, since the address we showed him in our little taxi book is out of date, but we arrived on time to a location about ten minutes from our hotel, and about an hour from where we were supposed to meet our hosts. By the time we finally realized where we were, the taxi driver was long gone, and we had no phone to call and tell them we’d be late. So, after snipping at each other a bit, we decided to get on the subway and head toward them. Well, one look at the line going toward the host, and Tracy knew she wasn’t getting on there—too many sardines in that can already! But, the line going back to the hotel was not nearly as crowded, so we went back home. We called them twenty minutes after we were supposed to meet them to extend our apologies, and they volunteered to meet us! Great people! We felt badly that they had to travel an hour, but it was a great meal at a Sichuan restaurant downstairs, and we had a wonderful conversation about a lot of different things. We picked up the tab, since they came all that way for us.
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