After my disastrous attempt to bike across China who would have thought I would end up back in the same country.
Unfortunately I’m not doing any geology stuff but since that was going nowhere a friend bet me to that the FSOT exam with him. Turns out I passed and after an intense month of orientation in DC I am going to China for a 2 year contract working at an embassy. I can’t really say anything else.
I’m kinda in the middle of nowhere for the time being so just to keep track in case I decide I want something ‘western’ I’m keeping a list of things I reconize. Also expect for my co-workers no one speaks English (unless it’s a hospital/large fancy hotel/select police stations). This is a blessing and a curse because it will be easier to learn more Chinese however the simplest of tasks has become an enormous endeavor. For instance I didn’t exchange all my US currency so I went to the Bank of China to get it exchanged and it took over 2 hours, but that’s another story.
Restaurants/shops
- KFC x2
- Dairy Queen x3
- Walmart x2
- Pizza Hut x1
- Starbucks x4
- Burger king x1
- H&M x1
- Haagen Dazs shop x1
- That tire place where the mascot looks like a marshmallow x2
- Apple store (could be a fake, there’s supposed to be a bunch of fakes) x2
Brands:
- Lays chips (in flavors Mexican Tomato Chicken, American Classic, Italian Red Meat, Texas Grilled BBQ, and cucumber flavor)
- Dove Chocolate (just the bars) and various flavors
- Coke/Coke zero/spirit/orange soda/welsh grape soda
- Reses peanut butter cups
- Kinder Chocolate (which is better than generic American chocolate anyway)
- Crest toothpaste
- Oreos (not double stuff thou)
- Calvin Klein underwear (which is sold in the frozen food isle of grocery stores)
- Ramen and cup noodles (which are 15 times more expensive than buying noodles in a restaurant)
- Trident/Stride/5/ Double mint Wrigley gum
- Peanut M&Ms/regular M&Ms/Skittles
- Starbucks Frappuccino drink (ya know those bottles that are sold in the glasses)
- Hersey kisses and various varieties/chocolate syrup
- Brookside
- L’Oreal/Head and Shoulders
- nestle coffee/hot chocolate
- Heinz ketchup/BBQ sauce
- One container of Ben&Jerry’s Pistachio Pistachio Ice Cream
- Lipton tea
- Quaker oatmeal
- Jif creamy Peanut butter
So after being here for a week I realized I can pretty much find any brand of thing I want if I look hard enough. Although some of the so called ‘western’ brands can be quite expensive. For instance a pint of Haagen Dazs belgian chocolate ice cream cost about 88¥ which is about 12.8 dollars. Anyway even living in a tier 3 I I think it would be more interesting to list brands I CAN’T find (so far).
- Kraft Mac&Cheese or any Kraft products
- Girl Scout Cookies
- Glade and other home fresheners
- Milk (There’s milk at all the stores but I can’t read Chinese well enough to know what’s ‘traditional’ milk vs yogurt vs powered milk vs weird milk that comes in bags vs milk that isn’t refrigerated vs strangely flavored milk (AKA red bean flavor).
But yeah. Nothing too crazy has happen since I got here. I’m not surprised since I’m deaf because I can’t understand anyone, dumb (mute) because I can’t talk to anyone, and essentially blind because these e-bikes and taxis seem to come out of the middle of nowhere and will run you over.
This is what Russia looks like
