What a weekend!
Wowza! Sounds like it has been one heck of a mess back home! Hope no one got to much damage from the storm. It is very hard to watch the weather on the internet and not be able to directly communicate with everyone back home.
On a better note, we want to send our deepest thanks to all of you who helped with, bought from, or donated to the rummage sale. Sounds like it was a HUGE success! From what I understand, we may have made rummage sale history in big ol’ Columbus, Kansas!! Thank you all so much!
We did a little shopping of our own on Saturday that was UNEXPLAINABLE!!! A group of about 15 of us decided to go to the Underground Market. Instead of getting a car for the day, we all decided to try our luck with taxi’s. Boy was that an adventure! The market is about an hour from the hospital, so even finding enough taxi’s to go that far was a trick. Before long, we had a line of about 4 taxi’s in front of the hospital loading up a bunch of foreigners. Let me tell you, we had a crowd! Locals just started flocking toward us to see what the big hooplah was! About an hour later, we all arrived at the market. To look at this place from the road, you would never know that it was a market. To get into the building, we had to go up a board that was leaning on a step- I’m assuming they use it for wheelbarrows- not wheelchairs! Oh my goodness, the place was packed with people and every type of Chinese good you could ever want. I’m talking like thousands of shoes, purses, belts, clothes, watches- you name it, they had it! It was fantastic! Jason, the kids, and I mostly stayed with Madalina and Andreea from Romania. Madalina is quite the bargainer- I, however, am not! She was yelling at me for not making the vendors go cheap enough. By the end of the day, I had it down a little better. Everything is pretty cheap anyway, so I have a hard time asking them to go cheaper. It was so fun though! Anytime you looked at anything, the vendors would say, “For you friend, I go cheaper. Cheaper, cheaper.” If you say no, they hand you a calculator and say, “Cheaper. You tell me what price.” So much fun, and of course, they are all very nice. We did have quite a time getting from floor to floor. They did thankfully have escalators, which Jason and I are used to getting on with the stroller and chair. However, Madalina and Cindy were having a time, so poor Jason would have to help take them up one at a time while I waited with our kids and then come get one of our kids with me. What a guy!! At one point though, I was waiting at the bottom of the escalator with the kids, and the people just started gathering around me REALLY close. So close that Brylie was telling them all “Bye-Bye” and swooshing them away with her hand. To top it off, Brayden was screaming and banging his head. That really helped matters! On our way out, we were checking out the clothes floor. Cindy, who can read and speak Chinese starts telling me “Please go fast, please go fast!” I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about until the most horrific smell hit us- it was the bathrooms! Oh lordy- we all about lost our lunch! We even saw locals holding their noses as they went by! We learned real quick what the bathroom signs looked like! Our last adventure of the day was trying to find taxi’s that would take us back. We managed to get them rather quickly, but we made a lot of enemies in the mean time. The driveway into the place is only one car wide. It takes 4 families with wheelchairs quite some time to get everyone and everything loaded. It sounded like a New York City traffic jam. People were honking and yelling at us from about a 1/2 mile back! Kind of stressful at the time, very funny to think about now! We were all pooped when we finally made it home. I think the four of us are going to skip out on therapy on Monday and go back to look for more treasures!! Hopefully the crowd will be a little less.
Today (Sunday for us), didn’t really pan out as we had planned. Brayden was supposed to have another massage at 11:00. We ran out of money yesterday, so we got up early and went to the bank to get money to pay the therapist. We had also planned to go downtown again after the massage. At 11:45, the therapist still had not shown. I happened to run into him in the hall, and he held up 1 finger and then 2 fingers- I’m assuming 12:00. I said yes and went back to the room. At 1:45, still no therapist. Time was getting slim for us to be able to make it to the store, so we ended up cancelling the massage for today. Kind of a waste of the morning! Oh well, our big adventure was about to begin! We were so excited because we found the address of a Harley Davidson store here in Qingdao, and we thought we would suprise my Dad and Kandi Rogers with a souvenier from HD in China. So we all pack into a taxi and head 30 minutes downtown. We pull up to the store, which is also a Land Rover and GM dealership. We see three bikes outside. We walk up and ask how to get to the Harley store. They all laugh at us. Finally we find a gal that speaks English. She tells us that the big store will open in July and she will call me then. I asked if they had ANYTHING that said Qingdao Harley Davidson, and again, they laughed! AHHHHH!!! So, the nice folks at the Land Rover store got us a taxi and back home we went. Apparently you only have to have 3 bikes and a big Harley Davidson sign to be called a dealership or store over here. Kind of disappointing- we really thought we were going to have an awesome surprise….
Our going away party is tonight. Giovanni was in the kitchen cooking up a big batch of his famous pasta. My belly is grumbling just thinking about it! I’m sure it will be a great time. We only have about 2 full days left in China. I can’t believe how fast the time went. Seems like yesterday we were thinking we would never get to come home, now it is time, and we are kind of sad to be leaving! Will go for now. Talk to you all soon! Love from China!
9 comments May 11th, 2008
