No internet - agony

May 16, 2007 Wednesday

My internet connection is not on today, so went to the office with Chuck to check the email. Updating my blog is quite something, because the blog page is all in Chinese. I am trying to remember what each box does. While I was in the office Feng called, so we worked on finalizing the trip to Wuhan and the 3 Gorges boat trip. (Those of you who know my feelings about cruises will be surprised to hear that we are going on a boat trip that includes 2 nights.) We have been exchanging emails about this. Feng types Chuck’s name as Chunk. I said that it was apropos.

After a quick stop at the apartment (4 flights) went to Carrefour. Treated myself to a latte at the rbt teashop. They had given us 3 coupons for future visits when we were there for lunch, so my latte was 10¥ cheaper. (They are big on coupons here. They have a scratcher at the bottom of the bill. If you win, you get something off your current bill. Meng Cheng and Meng Du give you a slip of yellow paper that you present at a desk on the way out, sometimes they give you some coupons in return. Since we can’t read them, we have no idea what they say, but they seem to save money.) (4 flights)

In the afternoon there was a TV show about a yarn factory. I called the American woman who had given me her card. She was in the group that we met in the supermarket. They teach English at the university. She was away, but gave me the number of one of the other women. We made a date for Saturday morning. We are taking the bus to the new Hilton hotel to the coffee shop.

Dinner at Jinke. (1 flight) Finally I found someone who liked the International Translator. Our order taker was trying to tell me what the meat was in a dish. I pulled it out and she pointed to the cow. She then called her co-workers over and showed it to them. Every dish we looked at, she wanted to identify on the card. We had pork and melon soup, spicy beef with noodles and bean sprouts, greens with tiny snails and pickled cucumbers.

Walked home by way of the laundry lady. Chuck’s 4 shirts were ready. (4 flights)

13 flights.