In the morning, I remembered having heard something about China having Kaufland or Carefour. We had both of those stores on my mission and they were really good and usually had everything. We looked them up and found that they did not have Kaufland but had Carefour. There was one close-ish to us so we found a metro stop on the map and headed out. No one had slept very well that first night. We were up several times and had been awake since 4 am and we decided to wait until 6:30 am to go out.
You know how it is when you feel like you’ve been walking forever and you’re not sure if you really have, or if it just seems that way because you don’t know where you’re going? Well that’s what the walk to the metro was like. The streets weren’t that busy yet, so that was good. Ali seemed to be enjoying her stroller ride, which was also good because I don’t think either of us wanted to carry her the whole way.
I had wanted to try some street food so as we were walking we scoped out the possibilities… and it was frightening! It was a combination of the filthy streets, men in their underwear brushing their teeth in the alleys over drains, stacks of dirty dishes on the ground filled with brown water, uncooked meat sitting out on tables and the putrid smell that seemed to be coming at us from every direction. There may have been some tasty street food mixed in with all of that but it would have taken a couple more days without food to be that desperate. I decided to just wait for some Carefour groceries.
After what seemed like and hour (but really is more like 20 minutes now that we know where it is) we saw the metro station. It was across a big intersection from where we were standing. At big intersections here you can’t cross the street on ground level, you have to go up a couple flights of stairs, walk across a bridge and down the other side. So we each grabbed a side of the stroller and made our way to the metro. The whole time I was thinking to myself that in a couple weeks I would be doing this by myself. We ended up bringing a jogging stroller and I’m pretty glad we did because Ali is so comfortable in it but it weighs 25 pounds. If you add her to it that’s about 50 pounds and I just couldn’t see how I was going to be able to lift that by myself especially in the coming months. Maybe I could just avoid the main intersection by crossing earlier? But I would still have to go up the same amount of stairs to get into the station. One thing that we noticed right away, and has become even more apparent the longer we are here, is that this place IS NOT stroller or wheelchair friendly- and that is an understatement! For example, we have seen a couple elevators but they don’t go from the bottom to the top, they will start on the second floor and only take you up one floor. So to get to the elevator in the first place, you have to climb a flight of stairs. They do have escalators in some places but there will be big metal polls in front of them so that you have to lift the stroller over them to get on the escalator. It’s so frustrating to be standing right next to a perfectly good escalator that you can’t get on with your stroller. And then sometimes when you want to exit the metro station, like at the metro stop we use to go to church, there are big cement polls as high as your head. They are spaced just enough for a person to slide through.
Anyway, we make it onto the metro and go one stop to Carefour. By this time it is 7:15 and there is a pretty long line of people waiting for 7:30 when the store will open. So we got in line and immediately the people started to SWARM! They wanted to get a better look at our baby. They came closer and closer, people stepping in front of other people, pushing their way to the front to be closest to the baby. They were talking and laughing and pointing and then they just could not restrain themselves! They had to touch her; her arms, hands, legs, face. Poor thing just looked up at me and I didn’t know if she was getting nervous or not but I sure was so I picked her up and tried to keep people from holding her, their arms stretching out towards her.
There would be a person who would know a couple words in English and they would find out she was a girl (everyone asks us if she is a boy or girl even when she is wearing hot pink and a bow) and pass the word on to the crowd. The crowd would them repeat it to themselves and their neighbor and laugh and clap and touch the baby. Then someone would find out how old she is and the same thing would happen. I was starting to feel really overwhelmed when the store finally opened and the people began making a mad dash for the tiny entrance to the store. Everyone was pushing and shoving their way in and once they got in they would run to their desired destination- the meat aisles or the bok choy. There were two or three aisles of bins filled with unwrapped, raw or frozen meat and peopled swarmed those bins, sifting through them with their bare hands!
They would pick up a piece of meat, inspect it, drop it and continue searching through the bin. Some older lady grabbed a piece of meat and evidently the man next to her didn’t like that because he elbowed her and she pushed him in return.(Here are the people crowding one of the meat aisles. It doesn't look as extreme as it does in person. Mostly because the man in the white shirt is making it so you can't see how many people are on the other side of him.)
People were yelling at each other, the workers, and who knows whom else. I wish I knew what they were saying.
To make a really long story a couple paragraphs shorter, we collected some essentials and headed home.
(These are the carrots they have here. Huge! Luckily they're not that expensive. We might be eating a lot of carrots.)
The peanut butter was not as expensive as we thought it was going to be. It’s only a dollar or two more so we got some. They’re not really into bread here so it’s not as good as at home but better than nothing. We stopped in some alley market to pick up a couple fried patties made of flour and who knows what else. I had a couple bites but Jimmy, and even the baby, ate the rest. By this time of morning the streets and sidewalks were packed and it took a little longer getting home because of the traffic. We did stop off at a park so Ali could get on the grass and play. I’m sure she misses being outside in the woods- poor little thing.
The rest of the day is a blur. I do know we put the baby down for a nap around 11 am or noon, laid down for a nap ourselves and woke up 5 hours later. Oops. That wasn’t going to help us adjust to the time… oh well, it was our first full day and we were tired. We’re just rolling with it.
