Wednesday, Oct. 1

Wednesday was the official kickoff for the National Holiday. Again, we did not do too much, but what we did seemed to wear us out anyways.

I putzed (spelling?) around until lunch then the five of us went down to Paris Baguette for lunch. I wasn't sure what I would be able to find for lunch since everything is either covered in Mayo, egg or both, but I figured I would be able to find something. At the very least I could have them make me a sandwich.
Samuel helped translate for me and asked the sandwich maker if their Chicken Vinaigrette had egg in the bread. He said all the bread has a little egg in it, but it was a very small amount. How about the sauce? Oh no, no egg in that. I had my doubts and sure enough, it had egg. The down side to that, obviously was that I didn't feel well. The positive side is now I'm starting to recognize what my allergy feels like. Thankfully it didn't last too long.
After our sandwiches, we moved over to Cold Stone Creamery for dessert. I figured I should visit the fruit place next door instead of risk eating more egg on top of lunch.
The first time I went to order fruit I was waited on by someone who did not speak an English. I attempted to ask her to wait then went and got Samuel to help. I hate being so dependent on others. Once he had ordered his ice cream he came over to help me. I don't remember what the other person had wanted when I pointed to the picture (thankfully everything has a picture to point at when ordering) but the second time we were greeted by a different individual... who spoke English. Oh well, guess I didn't need Samuel after all.
Turns out she had lived in Britain for six years doing some financial based work, so her English was really good. As was the fruit. I started feeling better after a few pieces, so that was good.
Before we left the food court there was one last stop at the doughnut shoppe then back home.
I think we vegged until dinner and then, come dinner, couldn't figure out what we wanted.
We had been talking over the past couple of days about getting a hot plate and possibly a rice cooker as well. We were only going to check out our options as to what we could make and if there were any sales going on. Of course there were! It was the National Holiday. Duh. As we checked everything out, we realized that the items that we wanted may not be there when we got back from our up coming trip to the mountains, and it just so happened that I brought enough money with me to purchase everything we needed. Done and done. Anna, Samuel and I are now the proud owners of two pots (with steamer), a rice cooker and a hot plate. And boy, those dumplings with rice were delicious!
I'm really glad we got those. Hopefully it will work out well for dinner while I'm at work. I don't get home until 2 hrs after the other two, but Anna said she would make enough for me as well. I'll let you know how it goes.
As for the vacation, we had a bit of trouble finding a hotel because we are foreigners. The Chinese government implemented a law saying some hotels could provide housing to foreigners over the Olympics. Because this rule is still in place, we couldn't stay in the same hotel as our tour group was. Jan, Samuel's friend, just needed to get our approval to spend a little extra for a different hotel. That was fine, we didn't really care. Thankfully we got it worked out that we actually got money back. That was just the first issue we had to deal with. Nothing was major, but enough to take note of.

More later!