Waking Up in China

I was woken up by the sun at 7 in the morning and wasn't feeling particularly social. Since my room mate said she would leave around 10 ish I decided to lay in bed, work on the blog, and iMessage folks until 10:30. I know I'm rude, I just really miss home and don't feel like talking. I did this in Paris and I'm usually done with it after the first week or so. That was when I made myself promise I would stay a month.
I did a month in Paris, I can definitely do a month here.
So I laid around the house, starving, but not wanting to leave my only connection to the states. I was really hungry so I went and showered and ate my vitamins (they're gummies so they held me over a few extra hours while I waited on the boy to get off work so we could skype).
In the middle of our 2 hour skype session, someone knocked on my door and entered the apartment. I got up and it was a housekeeper woman. She said hi and some other friendly something in Chinese and started bringing in cleaning supplies. I wasn't sure what to do so I went back to my room and whispered "I think I have a housekeeper" to my computer. He laughed and wanted me to go mess with her. Sensing it was a bad idea to mess with someone that has the key to my apartment, I opted not to.
She finished and left and I finally got off skype to go find food. I went through 2 of the local markets doing the best I could to find something familiar or, even if it was unfamiliar, something that had English so I knew how to eat it.
I managed to get bottled water (which I have moral issues with in the states, but apparently my filtered bottle may not be enough since the tap is so polluted), jarred pineappples, bread, the only towel I could find (a hand towel size, but it would have to do as I had nothing but my work out shirts to wick water off me from that morning), hangers, hand soap (at least I think its hand soap), a weird Ramen noodle looking package that doesn't have english cooking directions, but I hoped that Grace could help with that, and Oreos.
At this point I was particularly thankful I had been fattened up so my body could just eat its stored energy for a while until I became more familiar with suitable food that wouldn't make me sick.
I decided it was about time for a nap, so I took a 30 minute nap and then got up to work on the blog and do some reading, leaving my door open for when Grace came home. She got home around 9 and I told her of my grocery adventures. Including the fact that there were no tampons in any of the stores.
I happen to store all toiletry items of the like in the casing of my suitcase. Essentially, I often leave the house without backup supplies during week like those. So I buy another box to add to my home collection. You would think I would leave them in my car, and I do, until I run out very quickly. So I had quite the stock pile to fill my bag with. I also had a stock pile of gifted soaps, lotions, and stolen hotel mini-toiletries that I filled as well. Never in my life have I bought soap, and I'm quite sure I had enough to get me through this 6 months, too, but only time will tell.
She laughed and said she is pretty sure the Chinese only use pads (makes sense since that is all I found) and then gave me 2 towels that I could keep as her mom had packed way too many for her. Apparently she also gave her way too much in toiletries that Grace did not want to haul back, so it looks like I'm inheriting more soap in 3 months.
She then took me to the farmer's market type area, which is basically like an indoor mall with all boutique stores, except the stores are farmer's sections. I got watermelon, apples (I owed Grace one for eating one in the midst of my starvation that day), and bananas. Thank God she was there, because there was no display screen on how much they cost like in a real store. Just a calculator like a farmer's market at home. So when they said the numbers, I didn't know. Grace asked for my 50 RMB bill and made sure they did me right.
We sat up talking about her trip to Shanghai over the weekend to see her aunt. She said she buys all the normal food she wants when she is there as there are more internationals there. And she also uses her for her oven (again, we don't have one), and, with that, she shared a piece of really great banana nut bread she had made over the weekend.
My first baked good. Finally.
We talked some more before heading to bed, I had to catch the hotel shuttle at 8 that morning.
And with a new friend and dessert in my belly, I slept pretty peacefully.
Much love.