A Walk in the "Neighborhood"

As I've mentioned, walking is an integral part of our lives now. Yes, we have a driver and Mr. Liu has been invaluable to us, but to really experience the city and see what isn't necesarily meant for internationals to see we walk. Ok, so Mr. Liu comes with us to the trickier areas. He wards off the peskier folks and loves the attention the girls still receive. I was walking in the mornings, but it rained for almost two weeks straight. The trek would vary, sometimes around the park or maybe to the giant ferris wheel, but usually it was to the neighborhood center. It's hard to describe what these centers encompass. When I think of neighborhood centers, swimming pools, tennis courts, recreation-type areas come to mind. Well, those kind of places are "clubhouses" and are located in the compounds. Royal Peninsula has a nice clubhouse, but when it was being built somebody didn't fill out the proper paperwork with our friendly Chinese government and now it sits empty waiting for redemption.

Neighborhood centers are as big as shopping malls at home. These centers are all over the city, usually located in areas with many high rise apartment complexes or compounds. I did write about all the things that are in ours, but I keep learning new things about it. Each time I go, some new sight reveals itself. Just the other morning, I noticed how many grandparents were there with little babies playing in the park. Not a handful, we're talking dozens upon dozens. It's one thing to read about the culture and try to study it in classes back home, but to truly understand, or rather try to begin to understand, one has to witness it. The importance of family is not a lost concept on me by any means, but it is a different concept compared to the chinese people. But I digress yet again.

I finally worked up the nerve and enough chinese vocabulary to go to the fresh market. What a treat! I walked out of there with grapes, bag of oranges, onions, noodles, cantalope and fresh-from-the-chicken eggs. Oh yeh, remember my quip about how they probably butcher the chickens in the back room? I was wrong. They don't butcher them in the back room. First, you pick out the one you want for dinner, next they boil it, then defeather & debowel it (if you want)and finally wrap it up...all right in front of you. Nope, haven't done that yet, but lucky me, there was a woman right next to me who did.

The pictures are taken from our back door to the neighborhood center. I just love that walk.