Day 11 & 12 – Jiālèfū and Ròubǐng

二零一二年，六月十和十一日，星期日 和 星期一 (Year 2012, June 10th & 11th, Sunday & Monday)

Sunday morning, Mom went to eat breakfast with her old classmate. After breakfast with Eryi, 姥姥, and Xiaolan, I checked my email, while Eryi biked to a grocery store to get some green vegetables. When she got back, my mom and her friend also came back. They brought back some leftover shaobing while her friend brought us some boxes of snacks. They planned to go to Jialefu (Carrefour – a french grocery) to buy some shoes. Eryi and I were going to bike to Jialefu to get suān nǎi (drinkable yogurt) and shēnchōu (soysauce). We decided to go separate ways because we were going to buy different items at completely different parts of the supermarket.

Eryi and I biked to Jiālèfu pretty quickly. First we picked up some toothpaste then spent some time picking out the best brand of soy sauce. Then we got some duck leg for lunch meat. We went to Chaobai next to get some ice cream bars. We got 5 red bean and 5 mung bean then packed them into or cooler bag, and rode back home on our bikes.

In the late afternoon, Mom came back and brought some yangroushaomai for us. It was still hot and very delicious. After dinner, we all watched the TV series called Yeluchangan until 9:30pm. Mom had gone out for dinner and got back around 10:30pm. We slept around 11pm.

Monday, the 11th, I woke up around 6am and went running for 20 minutes around the neighborhood. I estimated the route from the Hao Hong Yuan gate to the end of the road to be about half a mile. I ran to one of the exercising machine parks and it was full of elderly people doing their morning stretches. I did some pushups and situps then returned just in time for breakfast. After breakfast, my mom went to pay the water bill while I stayed home to learn the first 30 characters in Rapid Literacy in Chinese. In the afternoon, my mom went to get 姥姥’s medicine. Eryi told her to get one or one and a half months worth, but she ended up getting two months worth. 姥姥 was a bit perturbed because the extra money spent, but it worked out just fine.

Come late afternoon, 姥姥 convinced Mom and I to go out to buy some roubing (kind of like a hot meat sandwich) from a special place she went to in the winter. Before biking to this place, my mom taught me how to properly get on the bike: using the method called huáchē. It’s more efficient to get on the bike this way, and much easier to get on and off. When we got the roubing, we bike home quickly and ate them while they were still hot. They weren’t that good. Eryi surmised that in the winter, 姥姥 wasn’t properly taken care of and didn’t have very good food to eat. So, when 姥姥 tried the roubing, she thought it was very good compared to the food she had at that time. There was quite a big problem between my mother’s sisters in taking care of 姥姥.

~ end of entry, 10:46pm, June 16th, Living room