Tuesday, April 14, 2009

What I bought for 18 cents Canadian


It's easy to get blasé about everyday life here. You get used to things. You don't notice the little things anymore. From time to time, it hits me that I'm living in China! Holy s_ _ _! It's hard to describe the moment of realization. You'd think that being surrounded by Chinese people speaking Chinese and looking at Chinese characters would do the trick. But no, as I've found out these last couple of years, it's easy to take things for granted. So when these moments come along, I really want to live them.

That's why when I was walking home with my little bag of greens, I decided to take a photo of them and to share this little slice of life with you (and document it for us to remember).

It takes about a 1 minute to walk to the gate of our little neighbourhood. At the gate, there is usually a vegetable lady who sells the basics like onion, garlic, tofu in all shapes and sizes, cucumbers, tomatoes, garlic chives, eggplants, etc. She also lives in the complex so she is a neighbour and we try to give her as much of our business as possible. We've found that it's easier and more pleasant going back to the same businesses. She sets up early in the morning and is there till well after supper time (around 6 p.m. here). So it is very convenient to pick up our daily veggies on our way home from classes or to just run out if we need anything. Today, I saw little bags of green jelly-like ??? I poked at it like it would give me a clue as to what to do with it. Unfortunately, I can't ask. I picked up the greens you see above for our instant noodles. I will also be cooking up some frozen dumplings to go with our lunch. This is a quick and easy lunch for us.

Breakfast earlier consisted of me running out to the street vendors and buying a breakfast sandwich
(36 cents) for me and a spicy fried flatbread (18 cents) for Don. Dinner will be cafeteria food for a change (at most $3) . There, our day's menu is taken care :) J

1 comment:

Eleanor said...

Pretty cheap! What would you pay for rent there and how big is your place?