$2 Charmin & Other 1st Week Experiences

Shopping: We made it to Carrefour and IKEA on Thursday to buy basics, and back on Saturday to Carrefour for groceries. The only thing special about shopping at either location is doing it with your million closest friends. We learned never to go on weekends, unless you want to battle for bananas with 700 people.
When you don’t speak the language, shopping for familiar brands was the way we managed. One exception, however, was dishwasher soap. For 10minutes, we stared at shelves full of what said “dishwasher soap” but had pictures of hands or stacked clean dishes. We tried to ask people, but no one understood. Fortunately, about 20 minutes later, we found a European dishwasher soap in the next aisle (the hint was to remember the new tablets vs. liquid). Buying toilet paper was another challenge. No familiar brands, and the charmin squeeze test didn’t work on any of them. We went by price and picked the most expensive – which was US$4 for 12 rolls and still felt hard. The next day we found City Shop grocery store which is the high end foreign friendly store. They had charmin, but it was $2/roll of toilet paper. We guess our a$$ aren’t worth $2/roll afterall.

Chinese Conondrum: We had our first 2 hour Chinese lesson and were exhausted just trying to learn the basic sounds and 4 intonations (flat/high, rising, lowering, and lower+raise). We’d write more but don’t want to get discouraged. This language journey is going to be a long one.

Menacing Mattresses: After 1 night of “sleep” in our furnished apartment, we went to buy a new mattress. We’re convinced our wood floors are softer than the bed! The shopping journey took about a ½ day – longer then hoped. Imagine trying to purchase and arrange delivery of a bed when you don’t speak the language. We learned words for “longer” (given Karl’s feet hung over half of the mattress), “tomorrow” (for delivery), etc. We provided some entertainment for the mattress store people given the laughing and pointing going on. The good news is that we slept better with our new pillows, and the bed is arriving as scheduled tomorrow (or at least we think so). At the end, the store lady drug us upstairs to pick red envelopes off a silver Christmas tree. We had no clue what was going on. Imagine our relief when we realized Karl won 1000RMB (~120$US). The best part was the pay out was in cash.

Bonsai Bargain: Somehow we managed to tell Mr. Shen (driver) that we wanted to go to the flower markets. He drove us to the Pudong side (eastern side of river) to a 2-story flower market. We started with the fresh flowers that had beautiful arrangements, then got side-tracked with bonsai and orchids in the plant section. We purchased 2 amazing bonsai trees. One mini forest and one old tree. They’re really quite incredible and cost us less than $100. Karl also bought 3 types of orchids, including an unusual fragant one. A great stop for adding more life to our apartment.

Food Frenzy: We are living off guide books to find restaurants now. We’ve ventured off a few times to find things like a $1.50 breakfast with order of a coffee. Or, the food court downstairs from Carrefour for an awesome meal of ~$7. With IDF next week, some friends are in town and helping us explore. We tried the famous Laris at 3 on the Bund with Mark, Cameron, & Chris. Drinks were amazing, including Karl’s chili mango martini. Food was French-California style. Last night we met up Mark & Cameron again for margaritas at Zapatas, then found South Beauty in the French Concession. Lesson: never let Karl order at a Sichuan restaurant unless you LOVE spice. The dishes, full of chili peppers flavored with shrimp, chicken, or tofu, left us wishing we’d spent the $2/roll for charmin ultra soft! The meal ended with birds nest soup served in papaya. Karl ordered based on picture, not price. For those of you who’ve eaten this, you know it comes with a pretty price tag.

Random Settling In: Getting the apartment situated is a lot of work. We’re pretty comfortable and happy with the place so far. The location is very convenient to downtown areas and walking around. TV quality leaves a lot to be desired, so we found the DVD store where copies are sold for ~$1/ea. Mark also found a tailor in our neighborhood and took Karl along to order some slacks. The internet is generally slow, but we did get our vonage phone set up.