Tai gui le!

Which means, "Too expensive!" Four of us, Abby, Mikelle, Jaimie and I went to walking street today to just gander and see what we could find. It ended up being quite a productive day at walking street. I am so excited! We are becoming quite the barterer's; none of us paid full price on any of our purchases today. It's really very fun. We ask them "Duoshao quien?" and they tell us how much it costs and if it is more than we expected or just not as much as we're willing to pay for the item, we say, "Tai gui le!" (the name sake of this post) and then they will either immediately lower it or refuse, to see how much we really want the item. If they remain stubborn with the price, we say..."Boo yao," which means I don't want. I don't know if that's the correct spelling but that's frivolous. Anyways, so then we tell them the very highest we will pay for it and they either say okay okay, or suggest another price. And eventually it ends with either us being content with the price, or us walking away saying "boo yao, xie,xie." And then they run after you and pull you back to their store and give you the desired item for the desired price. It is a beautiful thing! So I spent 65 yuan ($9.00) for a rad pair of kicks and a sweet bag. Not bad, eh? On the bus ride home, we ran into a little Chinese girl, her name she told us but I'm so sad to say I cannot remember. Any how, we were standing in a circle trying to bring in as much heat as we could because today was just frigid, Ooooophf, and this girl walks up to us and in very very broken english she started a conversation with us. It was a short conversation because our bus came shortly after it began, but at the end of the conversation she told us that that was her first time ever speaking english to someone who spoke english fluently as their number one language. And you could just tell the way she was talking to us, and how excited she was that she just wanted to talk to us so bad. She kind of had to put herself out there to begin with to even start the conversation but then during, there were a few awkward silent moments and we were expecting her to say goodbye and leave but it was like she was just racking her brain to come up with more questions... more to talk about, and after she told us that it all made much sense. It was so sweet.
OH! I've decided I'm going to really learn how to cook when I get home. I want to.

Walking Street!

Wan An