I'm Back in Business!

You'll be sorry we purchased a new camera today! New pics for you to see!
Shane and I started out for the grocery store (with Lia), and I popped into a shop that looked like a small electronics/photo place. I mimed camera--and the girl said no, took us outside and pointed to a big building. Shane said--yeah--that's what they all say--keep going. But we made our way up and over some streets to the big building, went inside and I got my Mandarin book out and showed it to a phone salesgirl. She pointed up and two fingers--so up we went to the second floor. We asked about credit card--we're out of yuan--no. But she gave us a slip of paper which she wrote out and we took that and gave it to a girl downstairs--but I showed her the word bank and we got to the bank. It was the first time we used an ATM--but just slide in your card, punch in your PIN and voila! YUAN! And more yuan. Shane said, "It's like Monopoly money. I could just stand here all day!" So he got some more, and we went back upstairs, the lady spoke a little English, pointed to a Kodak and after some explanation we just decided to get it. Then we followed her to the cashier who took our yuan, then the sales lady gave a slip of paper to someone who gave her a piece of paper, then we had to follow the lady back to the camera department and we had to wait for her to go get the "new model" and then she explained it all to us...sort of. She was very sweet, but she only talked to Shane. She played with Lia some, and some random young man kept playing with Lia, too. So finally, after all was said and done, we bought a new Kodak camera. We asked for discount and could not understand her explanation about why it was a discount but it was really the price marked--but I didn't care, I wanted the camera and I wasn't at the totally overwhelming Electronics Market with millions of people. This place was like a Sears store. An empty Sears store with lots of workers and two Westerners and their Chinese baby.

We leave in a little bit for the American Consulate. Big plans, too, for another dinner extravaganza tonight with the Watts and other folks. It is weird but great that at dinner last night there were three families from Webster Groves seated around a table in Guangzhou all with their Chinese girls. The other couple and their daughter live in Dayton--we encouraged them to move to Webster!