violin shopping (again) and a snuggly blanket

The Year of the Ox is fast approaching and it's just like Christmas with all the celebratory Chinese red items filling the aisles at stores, decorating windows and hanging from street lamps. Red lanterns galore along with many cute stuffed little oxen. I'm sure we'll acquire a few of those before the holiday's end. We have a week off from school in just another 2 weeks which is only 1 of the 2 weeks the country celebrates the new year. It's supposed to be a lot of fun, and it looks like we will spend at least part of the kids' week off here in town.

I had a couple solo missions so far this week. Things that would be hard to do as a family and would suck the precious family time out of our weekend faster than you can say chicken feet, hold the sauce. So off I went to buy a violin..again. As it happened, the cheap little violin we bought, though in need of some string repairs, was left accidentally on the airplane coming back from Chicago. Try as I might to recover it by contacting the airline, I did not succeed. Whoever took it deserves the prize of the broken, crappy non-instrument that it really was. Nathan has not taken a huge interest in violin. He never practices and I'm still not sure why we agreed to drag that instrument home to the US. However, we did, and we lost it, so here I was, off to buy another.

I looked up the music street online and wrote down the street names. I was sure I had located the same place we'd been to previously. Just sure of it. That should have been my first clue that I was totally wrong. Got to the music street and discovered it was not the same one. This music street had just a few music stores--whereas the other one was lined with them. Shoot. It was cold, I was not that interested in doing this all again the next day, so I marched into a very small store and proceeded with the mission. "Do you speak English?" I meekly inquired in Chinese. "Bu hui" (nope) the woman replied. Okay. I can do this, I thought. I managed to get through the transaction that started with her showing me a RMB 500 violin when the previous one I bought cost less than RMB 300. I explained that (sorta) and she went in "the back" which was really just a small broom closet and came back with the exact same crappy cheap violin I was trying to replace. Success. It was half the price of the first one she'd shown me, so that mission was complete. Having no real idea where I was at this point, having taxied to the neighborhood after having tea with an old friend who was in town, I asked for directions to the subway, which was an adventure in itself. After making it out of the shop with the violin AND an idea of where the subway was, I left smiling and laughing to myself. I ran into another woman who gave me that knowing stranger in a strange land conspiratorial look and we started walking and talking together. Of course she could have been a non-English speaking foreigner, but she was indeed a fellow American. We chatted for a few blocks and shared our stories...it was pretty amazing to get that much scoop in just a few blocks. We said our goodbyes when I turned right and she turned left but it gave me a nice dose of contact.

I also set out yesterday to buy a warmer blanket for our bed. I was looking for something really soft and really thick. When I was shopping for the blanket, the women (same ones I see every time I go buy any sort of sheet, pillow, towel type items) greeted me with gusto. Two of them started fighting over me and dragging me from blanket to blanket with all sorts of reasons for why the blanket they were promoting was best. My thing was if it wasn't soft, it was out. No wool, no feathers. I have 2 quilts already so this was just going to serve as an additional layer..you get the idea. The salesperson who lost the battle of the blankets was really quite annoyed when I walked away. I just laughed. As it turns out, many of these workers represent the products, not the store itself. So, the result is a lot of attention but not always the best intentions. I'm pretty wise to it at this point, but it still fascinates me to see this process at work.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as "simple" at our local store so the edges are trimmed with gold and the entire thing is covered in gigantic flowers. I didn't really care, as long as it was soft and warm. I brought it home, made up my bed and had the warmest night's sleep yet. This morning, when my ayi was making the bed she put that hideous floral thing on top--even though I had intended for it to hide under our less obnoxious duvet. Later, when she saw what I'd done, she seemed surprised. How could I cover up that gorgeous pattern? Trust me, I could. Soft and warm. That's all that matters.

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