A new marathon (but I hate running)

Well, I guess we're in a new marathon of walking the paces of life. We've experience the thrill adventures of China and tasted their foods and seen the country's beauty and weaknesses. Now we're back in the states adjusting to a new precious life in our family. It's been a week and we have yet to unpack our suitcases completely. Our higher priorities is child proofing the house and cleaning it to to a presentable state for visitors coming over to congratulate us. For now Anthony is also back with us from UC Irvine ( =) ). Our church has VBS next week (Crocodile Doc) and life continues more like a fast marathon (run, walk, stand still "huff, puff", walk, jog, walk, sleep.....) than a vacation in China.

Here is a list of the top 10 things We don't miss from China

10. Hard beds. For some reason, The hotels we had in China have really hard beds, thin sheets, and you could probably bounce a coin on the bed.

09. Second hand smoke: Cough, cough, it's sad to see so many people smoke and in restaurants. What's the difference between a smoking and non-smoking section in a Chinese restaurant? Wrong, all they do is take away your ash tray, and now your table is a non-smoking area (surrounded by tables with people smoking. Yuck. ) Sadly, you can buy cases of cigarettes
while you're in an airplane.

08. Cabs. When you enter a cab, it's like going into our dog's crate. It's small cramp and their
are big bars between you and the driver. The driver goes in a direction as erratic as our daughter walks. The traffic here is a living miracle where there are hardly any accidents.
Only here in Zhengzhou where you can cross a 6 lane major intersection and walk diagonally.

07. Grease and oil. All the restaurants here use a lot of grease/oil in their cooking. If you asked for less oil, the omelets would stick to the pan and the pancakes would be permanent fixtures on the top of the stove. I drank a lot of soda to wash down the grease. Fortunately, I love soda.

06. The lack of ice cubes. When you are hot and thirsty. When you are in humid conditions and drenched in sweat from walking or coming out of a bus with no air conditioning. That's the time I want to scream because all I have is a can of warm soda (shaken, not stirred) in my backpack.

05. The lack of ice cream. We spent $12 for Arlene to have a big ice cream sundae. At least it was big in the menu. By the time they brought it out is was have the size of the picture in the menu and Arlene started to quote a phrase that we heard from a old Wendy's commercial. Instead of where's the beef? It was where's the ice cream? This was the time, when Zhang Rui learned that ice cream was a good thing to eat and she wanted more!

04. Aggressive sales people. When we shopped at Guangzhou (Sharmin Island), the salespeople at the shops are overly friendly in trying to help you spend your money. Whenever you ask about a tshirt, they immediately open a brand new package to pull out the tshirt knowing you may feed obligated to buy it. Bartering can be fun if you can shop as a team. If your spouse says I'll take it, you lost your chance to save 20%. Often I didn't want to barter because the economy is so poor and they need to make a living too. Warning: some of their products may look great but soak them first! Our red tshirts bled.

03. Sewer systems that drain to nowhere. When we went walking to restaurants or shopping with our new friends, I notice they had people (young and old) near many manholes with long poles with hooks. They were pulling up the sludge buildup in the sewer and putting it in buckets for a central collection point (near my favorite Thai restaurant). Needless to say, even N95 masks won't block out that odor.

02. Squat toilets. Overall, we were spoiled and had flushed toilets for most of our trip. The cleanest squats was at Beijing at the olympic stadiums. I had never seen a portapotty squat
toilet with bubbles inside. If you really have to go and would faint at a squat toilet, I recommend you going to a special needs (Handicapp) toilet. Those come closest to the US toilet.

01. Drinkable Water. I try to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated. I hate the idea of hoarding bottle water but that's what I did. You can never have enough good safe water to drink. I was really happy that the hotels provided 2 free bottles a day. That kept us going for Rui's baby formula bottles. Boiled water just tasted funny and had weird floaties on top. I would buy a gallon at each hotel we were at. I wish China would recycle more. There is a tremendous waste in just bottle water plastics. I love our water in the US and especially in SF and Sacramento is good too.