Day 1: Shopping, Badminton, Sound Systems, and Card Games

So yesterday (Monday) was the first day of my trip where I was in China for the full day. But first I'll explain something from the day I arrived (Sunday) because I find it hilarious. Oh and to clarify, we're 13 hours ahead here, so right now it's Tuesday at 11:48 am here, but it should be 10:48 pm back in the central time zone where Madison is. 

So the night before last my dad was watching a Chinese soap opera. They're pretty much as ridiculous as all soap operas. The episode we were watching was chock full of emotion, huge surprise I know. So the main character is the eldest son of a rich family, his father being the head of the household. The scene I walked in on is when he finds out his father (who is now deceased) was killed by his uncle, who is in actuality his real father. His "uncle" slept with his mom, who is the wife of the father he always thought was his father but actually isn't. After learning this new information and confronting his uncle aka real father, he secedes from the family bringing his wife with him. His wife is a peasant and is eternally grateful to her husband for bringing her out of poverty, but she doesn't really love him. She's a good person, she just loves someone else and is carrying this other dude's baby in her belly. Her husband knows she's pregnant, knows it's another man's kids, and still loves her so much that he's willing to support her and another guy's kid. After explaining all of this my father goes, "I would marry this dude in a second, he's wonderful!" I laughed pretty hard not gonna lie. Also, I would totally marry this guy too, he's a winner let's be honest.

Anywho, onto yesterday's adventures. Steph (my sister) and I woke up around 6:45 am or so after falling asleep at 9 pm the night before. We did yoga (the P90X yoga dvd) for about 2 hours, showered, and ended up watching a random movie on my dad's tv (his cable service has the equivalency of ondemand that Comcast has), it was called, "This Means War" and it was actually a pretty decent chick flick. On the other hand I've been known to enjoy chick flicks, so go figure. 

After that we went to this HUGE supermarket that I went to the last time I was in China to visit my dad. It had three floors and had everything. I mean everything. Imagine like a Super Wal-Mart except the grocery part is much larger and includes like tanks of fresh fish and a meat counter and where the bottom floor is also a mall with lots and lots of store selling everything from toys to watches to shoes to whatever. The place was enormous. We got some crappy-ish badminton rackets and some birdies so we could play later. Also there is an interesting note about the supermarket. There's a bus that goes to the market, and it's free if you take one of them at 1 pm. Getting on the bus at the market is also free, but I believe is free at any time. So I guess the market pays for the bus system in order to encourage people to go there. Pretty cool if you think about it, and worth it considering the amount of people I saw on the bus. It was only about 20 people or so, but there were ass-loads of people at the market itself, so I suppose the system works. Oh, and we bought double flavored blueberry/raspberry Oreos. That's right, dual flavored Oreos, bitches!

After lunch my sister and I ended up playing badminton in the courtyard of my father's apartment complex. It was nice to finally play again but it was also stupendously humid and drizzled for a bit of the time we were out as well. We then proceeded to watch the final Matrix movie while waiting for my dad to get back from work. He had invited three of his work friends over, two dudes about his age (mid 40s to mid 50s) and a woman who looked like she was actually in her mid to late 20s or so. They were all work friends and were pretty cool too. They taught us how to play a card game that was incredibly fun and deceptively complicated. I would explain it but...well it's really damn complicated. Basically you need an even # of people and sit in a circle so every other person in the circle is on the same team. There were six of us (My sister, dad, his three friends, and me) and my father, his female co-worker, and me were on a team and my sister and the other two co-workers were on the other team. We probably played for about three hours or so and it was incredibly fun. 

After finding out we play badminton my dad's female co-worker (her name is Viola) invited us to play at an actual gym today, which hopefully we'll get to do. My dad wants to go later on in the week so he can invite some other co-workers he knows will play with us, so we'll see. Anywho, more interesting stuff later, it's time for me to eat lunch. 

Lates!