China: the old neighborhood aint what it used to be

I confuse this country incident #1:

The girl that picked us up at the airport looked at me very confused and said, "You look...Asia?"

Asia.  Yes, I do.

#2:

At the restaurant the waitress spoke to me and when Karl explained that I don't speak Chinese she said to me, "Oh!  You don't speak Chinese?"  In Chinese.

Our first dinner was lovely.  Ri chang restaurant.  My favorite was the fried beef tenderloin with black pepper sauce.  How do they get the beef so tender?  Or do I not want to know?  Two new foods I tried are loofah (yep, that stuff you use in the tub), and bitter melon (my mom makes a tea out of the dried stuff but I have never had it fresh).  The loofah, though prepared in a delicious garlic sauce and topped with noodles and crunchies, had kind of a, um, earthy taste it.  The bitter melon was, as the name says, bitter.  Yes, I took a picture of the water bottle because it was so cute.

Feast for four:  About 21 dollars.  Top that McD's!

After dinner we took a short walk across the street to a small lake that is lined with bars all the way around it.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the yogurt craze has made it over here, too.  We meant to get chocolate chips and some neat white fruit with black seeds.  Ended up with cantaloupe.  Not bad.

So, Eva writes on the door.  She is not supposed to (yes, we do have a few rules).  She writes, "Samuel."  Who at the time was two.  She says, "How did you know it was me?".  

So, did this Chinese person think that no one would know it was a Chinese person that did it?  It made me laugh to see, "Hello" (The one English word that vendors say over and over again to get your attention) and a cute little smiley face.  Big rebellious graffiti writer person was so friendly.  And happy.

The signs here are a source of entertainment themselves.  I am glad they specified which kind of prostitutes they did not allow.  

Things I would not have seen last time I was here:

Girl checking our passport had fake nails.  With glitter.

Eighties perms are in.  Awesome.

All these tall buildings.  The old buildings are gone.  

So so so many cars.  

Me up at 7 a.m..  Jet lag.

I never eat breakfast.  I hate it.  But I am thinking about taking it up here just so I can eat more meals here.