October 30th

I didn't mention in my previous entry that when we arrive back to the hotel on the 29th, Grandmother's knee gave out. It really hurt her and we didn't know what was wrong. The hotel had a wheelchair that they let her use and we decided to see how it felt in the morning before planning on the day.

When she woke up it was not any better, so we discussed options and thought it best to find a way to buy a wheelchair because we still needed to get back to Hong Kong. A woman at the hotel, Miko, helped us find a place to buy a wheelchair. We chose one off their website and then Mom and I took a taxi to find it. We asked the taxi driver to wait for us while we ran in to buy it. We got dropped up at a row of little shops by the road. We had to run up a few stairs to get to them. Turns out we went into the wrong one at first because the woman didn't know what we were talking about when we showed her the piece of paper where Miko had written what we wanted in Chinese. I turned around and saw the taxi driver motioning from the sidewalk that we were in the wrong store and it was the one next door that we wanted. The woman in the store next door knew exactly what we wanted and she pulled the chair our right away. However, when my mom pulled out her credit card the woman wouldn't accept it. She didn't speak English so it took a long time to figure out why she wouldn't accept it and then to ask where an ATM was. She pointed in a direction so I ran off looking for it. Because the taxi driver was waiting, I actually had to run. Boy did people stare! There I was, a white female foreigner sprinting down the sidewalk alone in an area that not many foreigners went. Eventually I found an ATM and we were finally able to buy the wheelchair. The woman took a long time checking our money because apparently there is a huge problem in China with fake money. We got the chair back down to the sidewalk and then the taxi driver tried to fit it in the trunk. That didn't work, so he put it in the backseat and my mom sat squished next to it on the ride back to our hotel while I sat in the front (she didn't like to sit in the front because the taxi driver was such a crazy driver).

Finally getting back to the hotel, we gave my grandmother her new wheelchair and then left her reading and playing sodoku in the lobby while we went shopping. She doesn't enjoy shopping so she was totally fine with this plan. Mom and I went to Beijing Lu Pedestrian Shopping Street. It was a bit more upscale then the one we had been to before. Hungry, we went to Pizza Hut for lunch since we knew they'd have English menus. I  had a delicious cheese pizza and oreo milkshake. Then we went to explore different shops and had fun at Uniqlo and a bookstore that sold books in English.

Hostess at Pizza Hut dressed up for Halloween

 

Symbols (icons? what's the right word..) for the Asian Games

Temple that my mom went into

After exhausting our shopping urge, we decided to try and find our way to the Pearl River. Not having a good map and the lack of many road signs got us a bit lost. We stumbled into a narrow street where people had little stands that literally only sold underwear, bras, tights, socks, and pajamas. We walked down it for a while and never got to the end. We didn't even see the end! It was crazy. We also got stared at A LOT so that wasn't fun. Scurrying away from there, we kept going and eventually ran into the river! It was beautiful because the sun was setting so we got some nice photographs of that.

Street food

Underwear street

We took a taxi back to the hotel and found Grandmother has just finished her book so it was perfect timing. We showed her our purchases, went to eat dinner, and then, of course, played cards.