Nia hao!

Language...

We are entertaining ourselves by trying to translate Chinese characters into the pinyin and then into the English translation. We have spent about 3 hours over the last day, trying to translate water bottle labels, phone instructions and street signs amongst other things. Today we purchased some biscuits which came with some tape wrapped around the packet. We thought about putting some of the tape on the bikes to decorate them, laughing to ourselves that it may say "buy one get one free" (we have 2 identical bikes) so we decided to translate it. After some work, we had discovered that it said "special promotional bundle", hmm, maybe not quite what we wanted on our bikes :-)

In restaurants we have been getting out our language book whilst the waitress patiently stands at the table and awaits our order (they do not disappear whilst you select your food and come back later as they do in the UK). We struggle through ordering but finally get there, we always get help if our pronunciation is really bad and we also point to the Chinese characters. We have been gradually expanding our vocabulary e.g thank you very much, excuse me, may I have the bill please - useful things like this. Numbers are going well and we can now count up to 999 :-) :-) I am really enjoying the Mandarin practice and I empathise with the people who we spoke to in India who wanted to practice their English - I want to constantly practice my Mandarin.

I love watching people ride by on their bicycles. Electric power assisted bikes are really popular as are folding bikes. There are also many pick up style bicycles or flat beds as well as the famous Flying Pigeon brand. Today I saw a middle aged women help an elderly man (presumably her father) into the back of a bicycle, he sat rearwards facing in a seat that was built into the flat bed behind the bike frame. She then peddled him off down the street - amazing. I guess that if you have no car then this is a way you can transport your elderly father around quite quickly :-)

Did I tell you that it is cold here! It is 14C (in the daytime, it's 5 or 6C at night) and it is chilling me through to the bone, it is a good job that I have my pink pajamas from Kodai! When we picked up the bikes yesterday it was a beautiful day
and the weather was not too cold last night, but this morning we awoke to rain and there was a brisk wind as we went out to get some lunch.

Until next time - we are off to enjoy our coffee night with the Trek guys, I have a feeling that things may get out of hand (have you seen me drink lots of caffeine after midday? I am strictly a morning only coffee girl)