Back into the swing of things

In case you weren't sure, we arrived safely back home and are (attempting) to get back into our routine.
 The routine usually involves Jane getting up early to go to work and me sleeping in a bit before getting some work done later. Because yesterday (Sunday) was not a normal weekend but a day to make up for the National Day holiday, our routine involved Jane getting up and me sleeping in and not getting any work done.

Since we were completely out of food, we had some trips to make; one to Carrefour for some groceries and one to the market for fruit and vegetables. We went to Carrefour on Sunday night, vaguely expecting it to be a bit quieter but it wasn't. It's pretty much either really busy or insanely busy based on some variable I haven't yet discovered. Anyway, last night it was just very busy. We picked up the stuff we needed and some other stuff and getting to the registers, we realised that we had quite a lot of stuff, possibly more than were going to fit on our bikes. However, we (mostly I) realigned the laws of physics and got the stuff home :) Although walking around in Aus seemed to mess up my road crossing abilities (I went back to looking the wrong way), my Beijing traffic cycling seems unaffected which is nice.

We then got up early this morning to go to the food market. We discovered that we had about 50 yuan between us (about $8.50) and the bank was not yet open but we persevered anyway. We managed to buy pretty much everything we needed for the next week or so (capsicum, broccoli, peaches, mushrooms, bok choi, cabbage, spinach, noodles, tofu, bananas and other stuff I can't remember) and ended up with half a yuan left (about 8c). Not bad going really :)

Coming out of the markets we went back to our bikes and Jane was accosted by an old woman who just started talking to her. She broke out the old chestnut "bu tai ming bai" - "I don't understand" to which people normally reply "bu tai ming bai? bu tai ming bai?" like she's crazy and get kind of weird but this woman just sort of stopped then kept on talking. Jane looked at me and I did my best "I have no idea what the hell is going on" shrug but that didn't faze the woman either. She just kept on talking and we had no idea what she was talking about. Then she left. Very strange!

This evening was our Mandarin lesson and I was slightly nervous because it's been about 3 weeks since the last lesson and I had forgotten a whole lot of important stuff. It went quite well though, she kind of quizzed us on some stuff which was ok, then we did some conversations and things. She seems to have decided she likes us because she gave Jane a pomegranate. Maybe it's a cultural thing? Then after some hilarious moments at the end of class she was talking about blood types and our characters. Neither of us had any idea what she was talking about but it seemed positive so I'm just going to assume it was good!