Natalie's not as young as she used to be...

Well, it looks like we'll be rotating the blog writing due to Monday's bumps, bangs, and bruises. My lovely wife and I decided to ride to Carrefour this evening. After getting her tires pumped up, we were off for Natalie's first bike ride of our new adventure in China. Well, the good news is that she made it out of the compound. The bad news is that she tried to jump the curb sideways to make it onto the sidewalk. She made it to the sidewalk, as did her bicycle. Unfortunately, they didn't make it there together. As of right now, she is sitting on the couch with ice on her left thumb and is missing skin on both hands and a forearm. We'll see how it looks tomorrow to figure out if she needs to do anything else to take care of it. The comment she just made is, "It's a good thing I have an ayi!" Speaking of which, here is her picture:

The next comment uttered from the couch is, "Oh man, I wrecked my pedicure too!" I'm not sure what hurts more, the hand or the wrecked pedicure!

Anyway, here are things I've seen in the past couple of days:

• Worker standing in shopping cart, rolling himself down the aisles to straighten shelves and restock them.
• Me, going to church in sandals, shorts, and a Tommy Bahama print silk shirt.
• Me, riding my bike carrying a wok so Hong could cook for us.
• Me, wandering through B&Q with Jacob looking for 9V batteries. It's a hardware store, they sell items that use batteries, but after conversing with three different workers in different departments we determined they do not exist at B&Q.
• Fifth-grade boys playing pack ball soccer. Only three of them managed to get hit below the waistline. It reminded me of watching Elise play 4-year old soccer...
• Pig snouts at a meat-on-a-stick vendor. Pretty sure it was the whole pig face...
• About a 7-year old boy taking a dump in the bushes and then his mom wiping him clean out on the sidewalk...

And now answers to questions:

Modes of transportation: feet, wheelchairs, bicycles, tricycles, electric bicycles, gas tricycles, mopeds, motorcycles, cars, vans, trucks, buses, mini-buses, subway, train, electric trolleys (like rail cars that get their power from cables above them), plane, Maglev (hi-speed, magnetic levitation train), skateboard, Rollerblades, horses, and tractors. Rickshaws don't carry people, they are used to carry goods. If you are riding a bicycle and need more power to get up a hill, you just tie a rope to the bicycle in front of you and use them to help tow you up the hill. Typically it is the woman on the lead bicycle towing the man and his merchandise behind her.

A Chinese fire drill is when a car is stopped at a light, and everyone gets out of the car, runs around it, and then gets back in before the light turns green. The wonder for me is, since we are in China, do that call it an American fire drill?

Yes, military time is very common. It makes it very easy to tell what time it is. Since the alarm clock is in military time, it eliminates the confusion between if it is set for AM or PM.

Since I have been here I have only seen one other set of Chinese twins. I don't know what the current twins rate is.

The cancer fruit is Lycium Chinese Fruit (Gou Qi Zi, pronounced Gow Chee ZZZ). It's other names are Chinese Wolfberry and Goji berries.

The whole rudeness thing is something we need to adjust to, and Chinese govt. is working on. We need to remember that this has been the culture for many years, and is perfectly acceptable. The problem occurs when we begin looking at it with our Western perspective. Sometimes the rose-colored glasses we are looking through don't give us the color we are expecting to see. It's really our problem, not theirs, and it is getting easier to deal with the longer we are here.

I removed the double post, sometimes the blog has a mind of it's own!!!!

That's all for now!