Author Archives

by

Walmart and Manna from Heaven!

What a day it’s been!  The sun finally came out today, and I could remove 2 of the 5 sweaters I was wearing yesterday!
Now I don’t go to Walmart at home, so I can’t really compare, but I think it must be very different. I was quite excited to go to Walmart. It’s about a 15 minute walk from where we live, and everybody was out on the streets. The contrasts are amazing. The iphone 4 was being sold on the streets as were barbecued sweet potatoes and  roasted chestnuts. One old woman had an antiquated singer sewing machine parked on the sidewalk, and was fixing things for people as they walked along. I  now know where to go if I need some buttons sewed on etc.
Walmart is huge, with 3 floors, about a mile long. Everything is available, with one floor for clothing, another for cosmetics,and household thinga, and the tird for food products. Lots of interesting stuff – especially the meat – chicken feet are very popular, and there were a number of things I did not recognize, nor did I really want to know! We did get some really good yogurt though to go with the granola I brought from home!
Later we sat outdoors and enjoyed a beer at the French Cafe, where we met a very interesting dutch couple, who run a business (exporting handicrafts to America and Europe) and have lived here for 5 years. One learns so much in talking to other expats who have so much more experience in this  “other” world.
Tonight we had dinner at a place called “Heavenly Manna”, and it really was heavenly!. When we got there, it was packed, and the girl at the door was asking us for something, but of course we couldn’t understand. A young American guy came to the rescue, and said we should give her our phone number. This posed a dilemma for us – Howard had been given a cell phone from the university, and we have used it a number of times, but we didn’t know our own number! So the young man, Steve, said give me a call, and your number will come up, and then I can give it to the girl for you! So that’s what we did, and  she phoned us 30 minutes later, so we had a table!
Now this restaurant is very popular, and fortunately happens to be next door to us! We would never see anything like this at home. The ceilings were very  low, we had to stoop to walk upstairs to our table, and we could barely stand. Along the way were some pipes  no more than 4 feet from the ground that we had to duck under!
The food was amazing! We had “grounded beef with mint,” crispy beans with mint, and a fantastic vegetable soup – not your ordinary vegetable soup that you or I would make! Along with that we had tea and a beer. The bill was $10.00!! I can’t wait to go back and work our way through the menu! No cutlery – just chop sticks. We’re learning how to slurp along with everyone else!
After dinner, it’s 80 steps back up to our apartment which is really good for us after a hearty meal!
Our apartment door  has a lovely big  Santa with a Merry Christmas sign on it!  We see Christmas decorations everywhere, but to the Chinese it doesn’t represent a seasonal thing, rather just pretty decorations!
Enough for today – we’re soon ready to go to bed, and you are all getting ready to go to church! (We’re 13 hours ahead of you).
Good night/ good morning – we’ll talk again soon.
Maggie
ps I’m adding 2 pictures – one of our granddaughters in Taipei, and the other of a fruit market just down the street.
by

It’s a New World!

After months of anticipation and talking about Kunming, our adventure has begun! Getting to Kunming was quite an adventure in itself. We started our journey from Toronto, and went to Taipei for 6 wonderful days, spending time with our 2 beautiful granddaughters, and of course Anthony and Vanessa!
Thursday we went to Taipei airport for our flight to Kunming, only to find it had been cancelled. After much negotiation in no particular language (we couldn’t understand each other) we finally managed to get a flight to Shenszhen, for the next segment of our flight to Kunming. In Shenzhen we had to collect all our bags, and believe me, we had a lot! Then, go through customs and immigration, and find the correct terminal for the next flight. We were given conflicting messages about which terminal our flight was leaving from. We did a lot of walking back and forth, and we know the terminals  in Shenszen quite well now. The funny thing was, there were no elevators and we had to change floors several times, and the escalators  did not accomodate our carts, so Howard carried our approximately 112 kilograms up the escalators while I stood guard over the rest of the luggage. Finally we found the right airline, and again we were told our flight to Kunming had been cancelled! A lot of negotiation took place, mostly not understood by either party, and we found another airline which would take us to Kunming – 3 hours later! Departure gates were constantly being changed, so we would walk from gate 58 to gate 2, then 46, etc. etc  These distances between gates were the equivilent of short flights in themselves.You get the picture! I think we must have walked about 40 kms!  We were to leave at 9 pm, and then were told the flight was delayed an hour! Several more gate changes and we boarded, and fell into our seats totally exhausted. Then there was another hour delay, due to traffic controllers trying to clear runways.
We landed in Kunming shortly after 1 am, and were grateful to see Olivia from the university who took us to our apartment. We arrived shortly after 2am, and the security guy opened the gate for us. Our apartment is on the 5th floor, and surprise, surprise, no elevators!! So we had fun lugging our very heavy suitcases up the 5 flights.Needless to say, we were out of breath, not only from all those steps and heavy lifting, but the very high altitude here – 1900 meters. Our driver did help, or we’d both be dead by now! The stairs leading up to our apartment are dark and dingy, but if you clap your hands, the lights magically come on! Hard to clap when your hands are full!
The apartment is very spacious with lots of light. The large windows in the kitchen look out over a courtyard, which describing it as beautiful or even charming would be quite a stretch! There is rain soaked laundry hanging from every balcony,like plaintive angels with flapping, sodden wings hovering wistfully over the expensive cars in the courtyard below!
We have lots of storage space, although no closet for hanging clothes. There are 3 bedrooms, and our king size bed is very comfortable, and very low on the ground. Sometimes difficult to get up in a hurry!
This morning our power went out, our stove didn’t work, and we had no hot water. However all has been solved, and we’ll venture out to find some groceries and definitely lots of wine. Already found a lovely fruit market.
It is a very different world, and other Asian cities we’ve been to seem much more “western”. People are friendly, but don’t speak English.
We have much to absorb, and the learning curve will be steep indeed! We have today and tomorrow to get better aquainted with this place, and then we’ll see what new experiences await us next week at the university!
We’d love to hear from all of you!
 
Cheers,
Maggie