On Thursday we just spent the day recuperating from the long day before and shopping until we dropped. We spent hours upon hours walking up and down West Street bargaining. Bargaining is so tiring! It takes a lot of energy to get these stubborn Chinese people to lower their prices! It was always funny to ask the price of something and they would run out to you with a calculator and type some ridiculous price all before you could even blink. We learned to really want something before you ask the price because they never let you leave once you show an interest. Once they gave their price I'd always say "TAI GUILA!" (too much) and then they'd start talking to me in Mandarin, but those are the only conversational words I know so it was a lot cause. We would give dirty looks back and forth and they'd tell me "no money! no money!" and demand I pay more. Then when we couldn't agree on a price I would just walk away and they'd run after me telling me I could have it for the price I was asking. They'd bag my items and we'd each leave the bargain happy (usually I'd be the happier one).
Sometimes I would talk the people down so cheap and then remember I only had a 50 dollar bill and it would be so awkward asking "hey I know I talked you down to 5 RMB but do you happen to have change for this 50?" I honestly felt like my grandma in those moments.
While we were shopping I ran into this BEAUTIFUL man. Literally ran into him. I was walking down the super crowded street and bumped into him and was like "oh I'm so sorry!" and then remembered no one ever speaks English here and was about to go on my merry way. Then he spoke. His beautiful voice echoed in my ears. It was love at first sound. He spoke English. My heart skipped a beat and my head tilted as far back as it could to view this beautiful skyscraper in front of me. We began talking and he asked where I was from and I returned the question. He was from the Netherlands! THE NETHERLANDS! That is where my family originates from and I am pretty sure right then and there I fell in love with him. I probably came off as a little too excited when he told me where he was from, but oh well. His name was Leander (Lee-an-der??). I didn't ask his last name just in case we had the same one and that would've prevented us from getting married. I am pretty excited to go back home and find him via family research. I'M IN LOVE I'M IN LOVE I'M IN LOVE! I have actually been staring at this picture of us for so long I think we kind of look alike? I've even convinced my roommates we have the same Dutch features and they agree so...
Later that night we met up with one of our Chinese friends we had made and he took us to dinner. The funny thing about it though was he took us all to dinner but only paid for Courtney. So we've all been joking that Courtney went on a date and had to bring her children with her. He even scooted away from me to be closer to her at the dinner table, but I'm not bitter. He ordered the most expensive food on the menu and being American we didn't eat any of it so it was kind of a bummer we had to spend so much money on food we didn't eat. We got a chicken (yes, an entire chicken. It came with the head, the wings, the whole chicken was on that platter. It was staring into my soul the whole time), some pork, and some kind of fancy fish who also stared into my soul the entire night as well.
After dinner we were walking back to our hostel and got split up from everyone because the streets were so packed. I got back to the hostel, but I didn't have a room key so I decided to go to the roof where wifi is provided. hahahahahahaaaaaaa wow what an adventure. Our hostel had a rooftop bar which is totally not a problem during the day because it has a great view and no one is ever up there. At night everyone is really drunk and trying to win a free T-shirt by winning a game of beer pong. Anyway... I climbed the eight sets of stairs to get there and found myself a table in the corner and was about to FaceTime my family when good ol Oscar decided he wanted to become acquainted. We began talking and it turned into him wanting to tattoo our names on each other RIGHT THEN. He was begging me to go with him foreverrrrr. Finally he was like "okay then, I have a better idea. What can I buy you to drink?" I was like well hey there I don't drink so sorry. And then it turned into this debate/ argument about how my religion is limiting me and I need to explore life. He was trying to convince me everything I believed it was wrong and I didn't know anything about anything. Seriously just a really annoying guy who was still single at 25 for obvious reasons. My mother saved the day by calling me and I got him to leave for a little while. But of course he came back and while he wasn't looking I literally ran down the stairs as fast as I could back to my room. It was quite memorable and my mom wasn't very impressed as you can imagine.
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