Trip Update

So, our first full day in China was good. We had some work to do in preparation for the meeting, but also had time to walk around the area we're in. I bought some cute little tea cup/pot things, Chris had some custom shirts made for himself. This is insane: it was $30 for each shirt (4), and when we asked when they would be ready, they said, is tomorrow okay?? I couldn't believe it.

We were the epitome of lame and went to an English pub for lunch, and for dinner ate at the Italian restaurant in the hotel. Though I ordered normal items - chicken fingers and gnocchi, they are definitely different that what you might get when you're in the US. I'm also so freaked out about having any water, vegetables and fruit and realized ordering around those items is damn hard to do. Chris is apparently fearless of those things and has been ordering salads left and right. We ended up staying up late working, finishing the presentation for Wal-Mart.

The next morning, I slept in a bit. After having coffee and getting ready, we went for lunch. This time, I said we need to have real Chinese food. So, after sitting down at what we thought was a Chinese restaurant and discovering it totally wasn't, the Chinese guy suggested a place across the street. So we head over there, get seated in this large dining hall type of place. The waitstaff at this restaurant speak very little if any English, so we were given this scan-tron sheet of paper with dim sum items on it, which we were to circle what we wanted. After going through the choices, we found about 5 items that sounded fairly good and safe.

Our first item arrives. We aren't quite sure what it is. It was some sort of shrimp in rolled up rice stuff. Not real rice, but like picture a huge rice noodle that is thick. It was accompanied by soy sauce. This one was pretty good. The shrimp looks odd though- it's more yellow than orange like the ones we're used to. Next comes the fried rice with chicken and salt fish- very yummy. Though we couldn't figure out how to eat it with chopsticks, and I was looking around the rest of the restaurant to see how the locals were eating the rice, and it didn't seem that anyone else was actually eating rice. Oh, and I forgot to mention, we were the absolute only white/American people in this place, so I am confident that we truly did have REAL Chinese food. They next brought out the rest of our items. Some sort of shark fin soup which tasted pretty decent and pork rolls or balls or something like it. The pork rolls were my choice and were wrapped in this odd yellow stuff that made my imagination run wild as to what it was, I tasted it, avoiding the yellow wrapper like the plague and it was okay- nothing I wanted to continue eating. I think that if the menu had explanations of what each item was, it wouldn't have been so difficult to figure out what to order. All in all, it was a good experience but we left there knowing in an hour or two we'd be hungry again and in dire need of something a little more American. Wow, I sound like a total ignorant American about this whole experience. Don't get me wrong- I'd go back again, I'd just try some other things and maybe do a little research beforehand.

We spent the afternoon in our conference room setting up for the big meeting. Aside from just setting up the room, we had to do a lot of shuffling on our gift sets- in regards to pricing and changing things out. In the end, we lucked out and Wal-Mart was going to be running 45 minutes late so that bought us the perfect amount of extra time to really finish it all up. Wal-Mart arrived at about 5pm in a flurry. They literally come in with an entourage of about 8 people, sit down and say ok, let's get this thing moving. It's really quite intimidating at first, but realizing they are going to numerous meetings like this one after an another, I'd be wanting to get them over with too! The meeting went very well, in our opinion and it sounds like they will be taking almost all of the giftsets we showed, if not actually all of them.

In desperate need of some solid food, we went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for dinner, only after picking up the custom tailored shirts that were made in less than a day for less than $30 a piece. I'm still in awe of this. Dinner was good and so filling. I have to say I have had such an odd appetite here. I'll be all sorts of hungry, put two bites in my mouth and then am full.

It's now about 6:30am Friday morning, and with nothing else left to do, we're going to try to leave today. So, I'm about to hop in the shower and get ready, so I have some time to pick up some souvenirs and goodies for everyone. At first I was thinking I'd stay on till tomorrow, but with a hectic day planned at home on Sunday, I'd rather get back and have Saturday to recuperate. Plus, I am almost certain I'll be back in October to start working on our Holiday '08 sets.