China 4

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strange things about china...

• you can meat eat on the street for under 5 yuan ($1 = 7 yuan)
  
• a taxi will usually be around 35 yuan ($5)
  
• chinese alcohol is will be under 15 yuan
  
• my haircut cost 20 yuan
  
• waitresses may make only 100 yuan a day
  
• chinese women love to argue. when working together, they scream at eachother. this has happened in every restaurant i've been in
  
• all residence in china, must have a place of residence reported to the police within three days or arrival. we hired a landlord to say i was living with her. it cost 200 yuan and took me over an hour of two ladies yelling at two female police officers in order for me to fill out three forms and be legal in china.
  
• most people carry and have 100 yuan bills. on the street any kind of meat BBQ-ed on a stick will be 2-5 yuan

updates in my life today...
*i took the metro and changed lines and still found my way home
*i went out with two friends today
*sofie showed me around people's square and the big touristy area of shanghai
*peggy and i went to a supermarket and hung out and stuff
*i'm tried Soju (korean hard liquor). it's great. 18%!t(MISSING)errible smell, but no aftertaste that i could tell.
*i've tried Baijou (chinese hard liquor). it's terrible and usually very strong. the lowest 38%!&(MISSING) highest 72%!<(MISSING)br>*i saw tons of shanghai today
*went to a street where tons of vendors were selling stuff
*went to a French pastry store, they looked better than all the chinese pastry store i've been to. i spoke *french to the employees and they didn't understand
*i bought a tomato a big as a softball. i ate it and it was delicious
*zoey told me that chinese believe that large tomatoes are posionous until they are cooked
*peggy taught me how to buy raw fish and which ones to eat

china is starting to drive me nuts. i need to do my laundry and really want to buy my own food, but i can't do either. I don't have a washing machine here and i can't buy my own food because i may be leaving today or tomorrow. it depends on what dennis hears from his landlord. by the way, i would be staying with him under the radar. this is not important, what is important is that his three landlords are having a fight because someone cheated on someone else. now they may be evicting everyone and selling the building or something. no one in the building is sure and they are all scared. so i'm still here and i have dirty clothes and no washer. Zoey was trying to get me to wash my own clothes yesterday and washed two of my shirts for me. a business will wash clothes charging 5 yuan for each shirt and 7 for each pair of pants. $0.850 and $1. She offered to wash my shirts for 3 yuan each and my pants for 4 yuan.

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