My weekend had a busy start to it on Friday night as I was on a quest to find new running shoes. My current ones, which I should leave nameless but I won't (ENDs) are falling apart after a short time of using them. I really wanted new shoes to wear for my long run which was this morning. So I headed off to East Nanjing Rd, the big shopping area by The Bund. I figured that I would have the best chance of having an English speaking sales person in this area since it caters to tourists. I was also excited to buy shoes from the largest Chinese athletic shoe brand, Li Ning, b/c when else would I have the chance. And, heck, I'm in China I should wear some Chinese brands (Li Ning actually has a small store in the Pearl District of Portland)! Well, it turned out to be a disappointment b/c unlike in the US, they don't do shoe fittings and the staff is not educated on the product. So even though I had an English speaking sales person he just told me to pick a shoe that looked good. I tried to explain that I needed the shoe to fit correctly and didn't care what they looked like but he didn't seem to care at all. So I had all these choices in front of me but had no idea what would be the best fit. Sadly, I picked from looks (which were not all that impressive up close). Turns out that I have big feet here and couldn't even fit into the largest W's size (I was only asking for an 8.5!)! So I had to resort to the M's selection where I got tons of stares for trying on M's shoes. I found a pair that were OK and thought that I could justify an OK pair of shoes b/c the price was only 430rmb (about $65, about $40 less then I would pay in the US for a pair of running shoes).
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| My new manly kicks! I didn't wear then today since I didn't get a chance to break them in beforehand. |
After the disappointing shoe shopping I decided to wander the area and buy some Chinese sweets to make myself feel better. Along the way I came across this impromptu group of shoppers that were singing very merrily. Wish I could have joined along but all the lyrics were in Chinese!!
Oh Yeah, there was a guy playing the accordion!
Here's an example of some of the sweet treats that I found. I bought these
from looks alone also. It's always a gamble if what I am grabbing will be
sweet or savory or even something that I like. I picked pretty well this time
and actually ate a few on the way home, not caring that I hadn't had
dinner yet.I'm a grown-up, I'm totally allowed to eat desert first!!
Saturday started out with the usual phone dates with friends and family. This was the first Saturday that I had made other plans too. I had been invited to play badminton with co-workers. Apparently, one of the guys at work had rented a court and invited everyone at work to come and play, even me! Oliver was kind enough to meet me at the Metro station to show me how to get there. The court that was rented was at East China Normal University.
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| Here's Oliver at the entrance of the university. |
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| Here are all the courts set up |
On the left, coworkers watching the game. On the right, hard-core badminton match.
Actually, it seemed that I wasn't the only one that was so-so at the sport.
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| A lot of the women my age showed up and I found out that a lot of them have super cute little kids. It turned into a kid zone (ages 1-3 yrs old). My camera battery died before I could get anymore shots of the kids. |
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| My co-worker Chen Ming, teaching the little girl how to play. She eventually started to catch on and could sorta hit the birdie. |
It was great to hand out with everyone b/c they were more relaxed around me in this environment. Most spoke better English then I had previously known...everyone is very shy to speak to me at work. The same group is going to rent more courts next Saturday so people can play at the same time, maybe we can get a little tournament going! Afterwards, I just ran my normal weekend errands and went home to cook some pulled pork.
It had been a good Saturday!
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