Funny things we've noticed

Yay, it's Saturday at last. One thing about here is that the weeks really fly past! It seems like we've been here for ages, but it's only 4 weeks or so.

I thought I'd write about some of the funny and different things that we've noticed so far about living here.

I wrote a little bit about the traffic before and how everyone just seems to get along on the road. They do have traffic lights here and people obey them, but when it comes to 'Give Way' signs or just giving way when pulling out into the main road, well that just doesn't exist. If a car is heading towards the main road, they don't even look, they just pull out, and it's up to the traffic on the main road to avoid them! It's actually really fun being in a taxi - it feels a lot like dodgem cars (with out the actual crashes - but it does come pretty close sometimes!).

Mmm, food...one thing we've noticed around here is that Rooster is very popular. You can hear the roosters in people's apartments, and you can tell what's on the menu for that night! Poor roosters. In the grocery stores, fish are in big tanks and so people just select the fish they want. In the shops there is a lot of chicken as well - raw chicken, all plucked, but with the head still on....and it's not in a fridge! it's just sitting out on a table in the middle of the shop! I haven't seen any steak, or mince so we haven't really being eating any red meat apart from when we go out. Ice cream...mmm...we can get Nestle ice cream in tubs...yum. The fruit is nice - the oranges are delicious at the moment and we can also get pineapple, apples, bananas, watermelon and things that look like Nashi pears. There are some other sorts of fruit that I've never seen before. We've been advised to wash all veggies and fuit without peelable skin in the sink in detergent!

Bread is like gold. There is one type of bread that tastes like real bread - it's wholemeal and only comes in a packet of 8 slices. Westerners are always on the look out for it, so if we ever see it we snatch it up!! Today we discovered a shop called 'Park n Shop" and they had the best stock of it that I've seen so far, so we got 3 loaves and felt very happy with ourselves. The other bread tastes really sugary and isn't very nice.

Hot water. Apparently most Chinese people don't have hot water in the kitchen (or so we've been told)...we don' t, anyway, so i have to boil the kettle to do the dishes. We do have hot water in the shower though, so that's nice - but sometimes it doesn't work, for some reason or other. Things in the apartments are always breaking or just decide not to work. The Brisbane boys haven't had water in their apartment at all for quite a few days now (lucky they are 18 and don't really mind!!)...we went out to dinner with them and the German girls last night and Matt had to wear a bright fluoro pink T Shirt because that was all he had left...oh, and shorts - but they weren't pink!! We've had the workmen to our apartment quite a lot. One of our air conditioners stopped working, and to fix it a small Chinese guy had to actually climb out the window (we are on the 12th floor) and work on it, all while holding on with one hand and his feet were only just able to be on the ledge. It was amazing. Some of the pipes under our kitchen sink are held together with sticky tape. Apparently 'that's China for you'!!!

That's all I can think of for now...stay tuned for the next exciting episode in the China adventure!!! Ruth

written by  arterra on September 22, 2007 from Dongguan, China
from the travel blog: China Adventure
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