Saturday's Shopping Successes and Failures

    It's been too long since we've posted but you haven't missed too much.  The last post discussed seasonal affect disorder and since then about three weeks of school turned into what seemed like one long grey day.  Last week we had about four days of sunshine and the change in everyone's attitude was unbelievable.

   After watching March Madness from about 6-10 am Saturday morning Bri and I headed out to do some shopping.  We each wanted to get a hat for our trip to Boracay in two weeks.  I tend to sunburn on top thanks to poor genetics and Bri...likes to buy hats.  We've found that in Shanghai there is a market for most anything.  Pearl market, glasses market, pet market, fabric market, electronics market...  After asking a friend whose lived here for five years for a little advice we were off to the "hat market".  It wasn't exclusively a hat market but there were definitely more hat stalls than the average market and within about 25 minutes we had each bought a hat.  The bartering process was really quick compared to the normal drawn out process.  I didn't even know what to offer when the man told me the hat was three dollars (20RMB).  After contemplating his offer for a moment I couldn't see stressing him by offering one dollar and then settling after a long standoff for two and half dollars so I probably got "ripped off" by paying full price.  My reward was getting to check the Kansas basketball score on his laptop while Bri finished her hat shopping.

    It was interesting to see all of the "foreigners" at another larger market we were walking through later.  I whispered it to Bri and then we laughed at the irony.  Bri went on to purchase a couple other items but was happy that each person told her she was very tough because that means that she got a good price.  On the other hand I rewarded myself with a steamer of pork dumplings and enjoyed conversing in novice English with a young girl and her mother sitting at my table.  Afterward, I wandered the booths trailing Bri working on my Mandarin numbers vocabulary and trying to get a pair of $300 headphones for less than $25.  Unfortunately, I had to be happy with my hat and my dumplings because I could not get the hawkers in any stall to go below liang bai woo shir ($40).  

I'm always happy to find dumplings to try.  These were below par but I find dumplings are like pizza, even bad pizza can usually satisfy a pizza craving. 

My table mate is enjoying rice noodle soup with some fried tofu cubes.