Shopping Trip to Remember
So when I last wrote I left out one slight detail that actually has probably been the ultimate language experience of the trip. It all started when I had to go Grocery Shopping last night. There is a store within walking distance away. As I dragged my little cart behind me, so that I could bring home everything I bought, I preceded to get lost and had to ultimately find my way. This may sound silly, but this place that I am living is literally a maze, not to mention the surround streets are diagonals rather then straight roads. (I am pretty much just trying to say, it is extremely easy to get lost.) Anyways, I got to the store eventually and I started shopping. My understanding of the products was actually better then I remembered. I even found the Chinese dumplings that I liked. It came time to check out. The whole world seemed to be at the store, since the shortest line was about 15 people deep. I chose one and just decided t wasn’t going to make that much of a difference. Now before I had left the house I had asked my roommate if the store took credit cards. She told me no problem. I hadn’t gotten money out from the bank yet so I was excited this was the case. I eventually made my way to the conveyer belt, where I carefully arranged everything I was buying in a weight order so that when I put it into the cart to go home, I wouldn’t kill everything with the 10 minute walk. The attendant did a great job packing everything nicely and I kindly told her “Great Job” in Chinese. She rang everything up and told me my total. I kindly replied, “Could you repeat that slower, My Chinese isn’t so great.” It was about $15 U.S. and I had bought about 2 weeks worth of food for me…….not bad. I handed the lady my credit card which she gladly took to turn around and tell me it was “Bu Hao” a.k.a. “No good.” I handed her a different card to see if I got a different result, but I had no such luck. So here is where your imagination has to come in. I was in a line with about 15 people behind me, having all of my groceries packed away nicely, and this lady telling me my only form of money on hand was no good. I pretty much just started laughing, because I knew that I had just gone and gotten some cash just in case because I needed it anyways.
So the real challenge started when I tried to explain to her that I would be right back, to hold my cart and I would go get money. Of course then the entire line had to get involved in my business, and then the entire line turned into the entire check out area. As I felt my face getting hotter by the second, I asked the attendant to watch my stuff and I would right back. To my surprise she answered “keyi” a.k.a. “Ok!”
So you know where the story is going now. I went and got money and then I had to wait in line again to have the attendant take everything that was packaged so nicely out just to re-ring everything through. So much for my nice packing job! I handed her my money when she was finished, and I thought at this point I would be home soon and I could forget about everything that happened.
Nope, I had no such luck. On the way home, the cart with all of my food had a wheel fall off. Now the entire purpose of carrying the thing to the store was defeated and I pretty much had to carry all of the bags and the cart home. You should have seen the looks I was getting form the hundreds of people that witnessed this. Luckily that was the last thing that went wrong yesterday, but then again there is always tomorrow to have another interesting story. I will go to the real “open market” tomorrow morning so I am sure I will have a bunch to write about that.
