my life as a criminal

there is a cabinet in our apartment that we inherited from another teammate 6 yrs ago when we first got to china. at the bottom are two doors with a lock on it. the doors have been locked for 6 yrs and no one ever gave us a key. on sunday i decided that i was tired of having a locked cabinet and really needed the space for all the extra stuff we recently inherited from our teammates who went back to america. so i went to our building "handyman" (term used loosely) to ask for a drill to drill out the lock. he wasn't there so i explained to another lady what i needed. this was all in chinese and i didn't know how to say drill, those are vocabulary words that you don't cover in introductory chinese classes. she said she would tell the guy when he got back. so i headed home anxious about getting this stupid lock opened (not sure why it bothered me so much, but after 6 yrs enough was enough of having a locked cabinet). so i started researching online how to pick open a lock with a paperclip. i tried multiple methods and nothing worked. the people online make is seem so easy to be a criminal and pick locks with minimal tools. finally i stumbled across a youtube video of a kid with the metal thing from a pen cap and paper clip. i attempted to pick the lock for the 20th time of the day and to my surprise it totally worked. i know, it was awesome! i'm totally going to break into people's cabinets now. i told sam that there must be some kind of treasure inside the cabinet too. because really, who would lock a cabinet and then take the keys with them? something awesome must be inside. when i opened the doors, there was nothing but an old iron and 2 paper bags. what a disappointment. it was like when geraldo opened up that tomb and there was nothing. man, geraldo, i totally feel your pain. it wasn't even a cool iron. it was like the first iron every made to plug in, it didn't even have the steam function. just a big block of metal with a cord.

i should have been preparing for class, but now i learned a valuable life skill. thanks a lot 13yr old kid from youtube!

back in action

here i am back in chiner :) we just arrive 3 days ago. i love me some jet lag too. how do you explain to a 3 yr old that even though their tummy says it's time to eat, the clock says it's time to go to bed. the first night here, sam went to sleep at 3 pm and then woke up at 1 am ready to go for the day - ugh! at least things are starting to look up. we're all going to bed around 9 pm now and getting up in the middle of the night, but at least the little sam actually goes back to sleep (without a snack).

so here's what's shakin' in china:

1. pizza hut!!!!!!! seriously, we have a pizza hut now. we don't even have a mcdonalds, but we actually have a pizza hut. we went for lunch today and they wouldn't make us a pepperoni pizza. how lame is that? isn't the pepperoni pizza what all pizza places were started on? it was difficult to explain that we didn't want the seafood toppings and that we only wanted the pepperoni, after the manager put the negatory on it, we were stuck ordering off the menu. but don't order the cheese pizza today, they don't have it. i know you're thinking - is it really pizza hut? according to the logo and prices it is.

2. crappier roads and an increase in taxi fares that's what else is new here.

3. chinese food still jacks up my tummy. i think i put some weight on after living in the states for a few months, but after the last days, i'm pretty sure that i'm back down to my "china weight".

now were are trying to wipe all the dust off our stuff and unpack all our stuff. i'm also realizing that 3 girls in one tiny apartment is going to be a difficult thing. man, those girls have a lot of clothes!

i'm still in shock about the pizza hut. when we first arrived in siping 5 yrs ago we just got snickers, and they were even hard to find. now i'm waiting for the mcdonalds.