Very Superstitious

It's no secret that I'm extremely superstitious.  Here's one for all you non-believers.  My horoscope for today reads:

March 14, 2013

Acting on impulse, changing your usual routine, improvising, and using your intuition rather than following a prescribed, logical way of doing things is called for now.  The tempo of your life accelerates now.  Expect a rather inconstant, unpredictable, but interesting time.

Couldn't have said it better myself.  Pretty much sums up my life since Christmas break.


Somedays when we walk home from lunch, I have spotted women knitting and embroidering on the streets.  I am amazed at their craft and was able to snap a couple of photos.  If you're a knitter, you know that using needles that small produces a fine garment but takes a tremendous amount of time and patience.  My new goal is to find our where to get yarn so maybe I can join them!

I also see these guys on the way to and from school, I wonder if I am hearing them in the mornings too!

In other street news, we successfully purchased yogurt, oranges, bananas, and a small cake-like (delicious) desert on the way home.  I'm a new fan of these mini-bananas and oranges and like to keep them on hand in my room.

Interacting has been challenging.  We are quickly learning to count in Mandarin...yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi is 1-10 and proving useful as I almost purchased about 20 bananas (good thing there is a park with monkeys just around the corner) instead of the 5 I wanted (I ended up with 6 and called it good).  But, the fact that we ended up back at the hotel, treats in hand proved that we will survive and laugh along with the people on the street who sometimes laugh at us, even though we don't know why.

Travel tip:  Learn to count in Mandarin!