Why would anyone do that?

I was passing by a lot of cute coffee shops today when I ran across one that had some chalkboard advertisements out front. This one says: "Come have a cup of coffee that is more expensive than Starbucks." Then it tells you that they are using Lavazza brand coffee, and they tell how much the coffee beans, milk, cup and service cost that add up to be more than at Starbucks. Are these people CRAZY?! Is it now a matter of pride to have prices higher than Starbucks? Starbucks in China is already higher than in the U.S. (it has been in the news here during the past week). I bought a small thermos today. I'm not handing my wallet over to these greedy coffee meisters!

A friend in need

I have a friend here in Bamboo Forest (let's call him Oscar) and his 64-year-old mother is having a very large tumor removed from the side of her neck Monday morning our time (Sunday evening American time, around your bedtime probably). It is a very tricky and risky surgery, so I told Oscar that I would get some of my friends to pray for his mother (and to pray for him and his dad too). They don't have any Christian friends, so I am lending him mine to stand in the gap! :-)

Can you please pray for this situation? His mom is a professional photographer, has only one child, and is a life-long city dweller. Oscar, in his early 30s and still living at home -- as is the custom prior to marriage here -- is scared.

Thank you.

UPDATE OF NOVEMBER 2ND: Oscar's mom went through the surgery well. She was weak right after the surgery and they were worried, but now she is able to walk a little in the hospital unassisted, and can drink soup. They hope she can go home in a few days. Thank you for praying for her.

Magical day in the Kingdom

 I got up early today to meet my friends for coffee. It was a beautiful fall day.

The part of town where we met was full of coffee shops, restaurants, and art shops. I just love it here, and I don't know why I don't go more often. It is not that far from where I live really.

It's a trendy part of town. It wasn't crowded when I arrived, but when I left at lunch time it was so packed I could hardly get out.

Based on what I've seen on Facebook, cute food decorations are the "in" thing in the U.S. Seems they are popular here too. These are meat buns (or maybe instead of meat they have something sweet inside, but that is definitely steamed bread surrounding some kind of filling). They were for sale on the above-mentioned trendy street.

Here's my cup of coffee and one of my friends. Despite how it looks, the cup of coffee was not really bigger than my friend. When we finished visiting for a couple of hours at the coffee shop, I had to detour to go home, because of all the crowds. What a lovely detour it was, because if I hadn't taken it, I would not have discovered this:

Marks and Spencer!!!!!!! It's a British department store, in case you're not familiar. I LOVE this store. I used to make trips to Hong Kong, with visits to this store in mind. I can't believe one opened in my city!!!! It just opened. They have clothes that are normal sizes, unlike most stores in town that carry size zero as the largest size. I went in this store and I had to contain myself. I wanted to jump up and down like an excited 5 year old, but wisely and quickly determined it wasn't appropriate to display my emotion publicly at my advanced age. So I jumped up and down inwardly. You do remember last week I mentioned that there is nothing I like to shop for in this country? I so happily can take that back now.

Marks and Spencer also carries food items (lots of packaged goods, canned goods, coffee, etc.), and they are generally very good, cheap, and packaged beautifully. And they have a cafe too. The grocery section and cafe aren't opening until December though, but it will probably be my favorite hangout once it is open.

And you know what? They have a brand new Gap store here too, just near Marks and Spencer! (I took a picture of it, but somehow I lost it when downloading the photos). Gap has normal sizes too. I haven't seen a Gap store in China before, although I'm quite sure we are not the first city in China to get one. Beijing and/or Shanghai are usually always the first.

You probably can't imagine why clothing stores could make me so excited. So let me tell you. I am not trying to promote materialism; but I have for years lived under a certain kind of stress. I usually ONLY buy clothes when I am in the U.S. I would love to buy clothes here, but the size zero thing just makes it impossible. I have a great collection of shoes, socks, purses and scarves that I bought in China, but not clothes. When in the U.S. I have to buy 2-3 years worth of clothing, both under and outwear, and hope it will last. And I can't buy much because too much won't fit in the two suitcases the airline allows. All of a sudden, my clothes-buying-in-America intense pressure has been relieved. My life has changed, to tell the truth! I'll still buy stuff in America, but I don't have to depend on those infrequent trips to supply all my clothing needs. Wow, shopping has become fun again, all in the blink of an eye! I had to drag myself out of these stores today after I had looked at everything 2 or 3 times.

I was proud of myself too, because last night I went through my closets and threw away lots of old junky clothes. There's not much left in my closets; I bought one thing today to help re-stock it. (Yeah, after all that excitement and chatter, I just bought one sweater. I practiced self-control.) :-)

Then I went back to my place and went out for a jog as part of my SBP (shrinking body project). There's a beautiful, well kept park right next to where I live. It has a walking track with a soft track-like surface (that's it on the bottom left). I like how it has trees and bushes near the track so it feels more like a stroll in a park -- a football field track is a bit less enticing!

I made some new friends (a family) while I was jogging. (Yeah, they stopped me during my jog, so it interrupted my attempt to get aerobic benefits.) But I think it will be worth it. We exchanged contact information and I am happy I got a chance to meet them.

Later in the day, I got an email out of the blue from some former co-workers thanking me for helping them adjust to the culture when they arrived six years ago. They were laughing among themselves about their initial mistakes with the culture and decided to write and thank me. How nice of them to take the time to write!

And then my mom had a surgical implant procedure last week to relieve her back pain, and it worked! She is currently pain-free for the first time in recent memory (her pain was so severe before that she could hardly move/walk ... she broke a vertebrae last year). She and my dad are really happy (we all are)! Things are looking up, and that makes my heart glad.

Today gets an A+ in my book. From start to finish, it was a beautiful, perfect day. Thank you God for the gift of today.

Eating out

Seoul is full of interesting shops and restaurants (even though I did my own cooking while I was in Seoul). Above is Taco Bell and below is Krispy Kreme. (China has neither of these. There used to be Krispy Kreme in Shanghai, but the one I knew about closed down.) Seoul also had other western restaurants like On the Border, Outback Steakhouse, Dunkin Donuts, all the fast food giants, etc. The supreme tacos at Taco Bell cost $5 each. Nothing is really cheap in Seoul.

A little freaky

My e-bike seat has storage room underneath it; it's good for storing a rain poncho, the battery charger, etc. I haven't been able to close the seat for a few weeks though. I can still ride it, but if anyone noticed the seat wasn't latched properly, they could steal the stuff inside.

Today I went to the retail place where I bought the e-bike, and they couldn't fix it (although they can usually fix things). They told me to go to the company that makes that particular Palla brand of e-bike to get it fixed. They gave me a business card with the address of the place. It was quite a drive to get there ... nowhere near where I live.

At Palla, about 5 or 6 men, most of them smoking and just hanging out at the shop, came to have a look at the problem. They probably didn't even think I could speak Chinese or understand them, but were discussing among themselves that I had a Palla bike and wondered where I'd purchased it. Then one of the men said in Chinese, "She bought it in September 2012."

My jaw dropped. Even I can barely remember when I buy things, but he is exactly right, I bought it in September 2012. He saw the look on my face and started laughing. He happened to have been in the retail shop the day I bought the bike. And he remembered the date.

That, my friends, is a wee bit freaky.

Forced vacation

I just got back from a forced, all-expense-paid nine-day vacation in Seoul, South Korea. My other option was to stay in China and get arrested for over-staying my visa, so after careful consideration, I went on the trip to Seoul.

Anyway, it wasn't really all-expense paid. I got $15 a day to offset the cost of meals. Not that you can pay for even one meal in Seoul for that amount of money. The cheapest meal at "On the Border" was $22. Donuts were about $5 each. I bought stuff at the grocery store and cooked my own meals all week (for health reasons). Two chicken breasts cost $10, so I didn't eat chicken. I was happy with my kitchen in my little guest housing unit.

Back to my trip. I was supposed to get some work done while I was there (which requires Internet), and maybe even update this blog. But there was no Internet in my room. I could go stand in the stairwell and get enough bars to operate, but it is hard to type while sitting on the cold hard stairs. I could have gone to a coffee shop, but walking a few miles up and down hills with my computer to get to a coffee shop was not my idea of a fun day. So I didn't do that. I took my iPad, but you can't really do much work or blogging on those things.

My favorite part of Seoul is downtown (Myeongdong). They have excellent shopping in Seoul. I hardly ever shop in China because there's nothing here I want, except groceries. There were lots of interesting things to shop for in Seoul. I even bought clothes in Asia, if you can believe that. I bought two sweaters at the Forever 21 shop there.

Seoul is full of beautiful, well-dressed people, even though somehow I didn't capture any of that with my camera.

The awesome, modern city of Seoul had one thing I didn't like at all: the subway system. Oh, it criss-crossed all over town, and the trains themselves are fine, but the stations must have been built fifty years ago. There were not many escalators, and at one station I had to ascend nine stories to get to ground level. To switch trains, you may have to walk a quarter of a mile or more (unlike other cities where you climb a flight of stairs and there you are). Some days I stayed in my guest house apartment just because I couldn't bear all the hills and stairs at the subway station. My feet hurt.

Though as a Texan, I am prone to exaggeration, I must tell you that I am not exaggerating about the number of flights of stairs or the distance I had to walk. They had signs telling you how many meters it was to the transit station (they might as well have listed them in kilometers) and I did my math. And I used to be a math teacher, so yeah, I can figure it out.

And by the way, all those people on the subway? They are looking at their Samsung phones. Samsung rules, in Seoul anyway (pretty popular in China too).

The above photo (in Itaewon neighborhood) shows you an example of the steep streets everywhere. Whoever established the city of Seoul didn't go to city planning school ... everyone knows you build a city on flat ground, not on hills. (May I congratulate my home town of Pecos, Texas, for excelling in this particular skill. Not that they had much of  a choice.)

Seoul is a town I could live in ... if I had a car and didn't have to navigate all the subways and hills. (I do not plan to move, I'm just saying it is a lovely city. Too bad they have a saber-rattling leader up north who keeps them on edge all the time.)

Here I am in a coffee shop, reading a Kindle book on my iPad. (I said "here I am," like I was in the picture or something, which obviously I am not.)

Here I am (there I go again) at Dunkin' Donuts, drinking coffee and reading the Kindle book. I read a whole book that week. Dunkin' Donuts had the cheapest coffee in town, not to be confused with "cheap" coffee ($3.50, if I remember correctly.) They also had free Internet and a lovely environment overlooking the streets below. Starbucks didn't have free Internet or a view, plus, you know, their coffee is seriously expensive.

I went to the park near the river (the river is pictured in the top photo). I actually took a boat ride on that river one day. I love boat rides. A woman at the park was selling cotton candy in two forms: the original style and in cups. Cups? Never saw that before. The woman was adamant that her face not be in the picture. So it's not.

It was a beautiful fall day on the Saturday I was in town, and thousands of people, mostly families and young couples, were out enjoying themselves at the park. 

Sorry I've been absent from the blog for so long. Since I got back to China (with my new visa), I have been working overtime to catch up on things I didn't get done while in Seoul. But I'm back with Mimi, and my next trip is a whole two weeks away, so all is well here.

Still here still

So, I am in South Korea, and my passport is in America, and Fed-Ex had it, and then they lost it, and then they found it again. I got my visa that I wanted (good for one year), but now Fed-Ex has me waiting, with a newfound lack of confidence in their professionalism, to get it back. One day life will calm down -- I hope -- and my carefree bloggy life can resume again. 

I am grateful for your prayers and thankful to God that He worked to get my visa. 

I'm ready for this to be over with though. I have a doggy waiting at home for me ... oh yeah, and many two-legged friends too!

Still here

Just a quick note to let you all know I am still alive and kicking. I have to leave the country this Sunday and be gone a minimum of ten days to get my new paperwork to return. I'm busy running around trying to get things in order, so the blog may suffer for a little while, but I'll be back soon.

The above photo was taken inside my apartment complex. There's a covered bridge in the photo and a park bench on the other side of the bridge.