From Grits to Chopsticks

This evening while waiting for a greasy chicken sandwich at our local fast food joint, I was reminded again of how things in China are quite different than in America.  In this case, it had to do with the “seasonal” decorating scheme (in May):

Even though we’ve been here for over a year, many things still grab our attention.  At weddings in the US, it’s typical to decorate the church with flowers, but here, they decorate the limo:

Before I came to China, I falsely assumed that wooden shoes would only be found on Dutch feet.  One of our students has “flip-flops” that make a bit more noise than the rubber ones we grew up with:

People here are tough, especially the women.  When you see road construction underway, it’s typical that most of the crew will be women:

A few weeks ago as I prepared to give mid-term exams to my students, I did what every other teacher does – go to one of the local copy shops to make a few hundred copies of the test (our school doesn’t provide this service).  During final exam week, these shops will be mobbed with students getting advance copies of exams from the entrepreneurial owners:

When we’re not teaching or hanging out with students, Susan and I like to hit the town and have some fun:

I know that we’ve posted photos of trikes before, but it still amazes us to see how much stuff they can load on these things:

Finally, a blog like this wouldn’t be complete without a photo of interesting word usage.  When we saw this display of toilet paper at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago, we laughed at how close the brand name is to “smell”: