Trapped in a Walmart

So, our first official trip off of the school campus was to Walmart (exciting!). I very quickly regretted letting anyone who speaks Mandarin out of my sight.

Imagine going into Walmart tomorrow and not understanding a single word on any of the products you want to buy. Imagine there are different brands, no instructions, and the only people to help – and boy, do they want to help – cannot understand you, nor you them. It starts out cute and funny at first, but as time progresses, you become increasingly hungry, tired, and frustrated. It took me 10 minutes to figure out if my floor cleaning device would be good to wash the floor! It was too much to buy a converter – I had to go without (I have one, and that’s been another irritating experience, more on that in a bit). We got pillows, sheets, and extremely pretty towels, a wok (I'm going to cook...eventually), etc. However, before I could buy plates and utensils, and all sorts of other things (like CONDITIONER! I have multiple bottles of shampoo, and no conditioner! The agony), I tapped out. I was DONE! I just wanted to pay and get out. I struggled back with our overflowing cart to where we had come in and discovered quite painfully that I could not pay or exit there. I had to mime and gesture to my buggy and show my money several times and to several people, and – sometimes – I would be understood and pointed in a certain direction. Sometimes, I would just get an apologetic shrug. I made the rounds on the bottom floor before being told to go upstairs, and when I got there I was barely hanging on to my patience and trying to press down just how agitated I was when I discovered a food market. This was NOT what I wanted to discover when I arrived at the top of the escalator! I wanted to discover an exit sign (though not really - I have discovered the exit signs do not lead me to an acceptable way for a shopper to exit the building. Naturally!). I eventually found a wonderful girl who could tell I was at my wits end, and she held my hands earnestly and told me as best she could how to escape the dreaded department store. I thanked her profusely and wanted to hug her, I was so relieved. As we made our way to the checkout, we passed through the fish and meat department and Zac informed me that "his nose was sad." Bahaha. I thought that was pretty polite of him!

At the checkout, I was sooo excited to see a Snickers bar! That helped perk us up a bit. I discovered some fellow teachers at the checkout who declared this must have been a test of our patience, and then saw that here, they do not bag our items for us. I was ready to drop, but pushed my cart over to the wall after paying and began to bag all of my items (there was a lot, and they were big). Following that, we hit up a bakery and fell in love with everything. The place smelled amazing! We got some delicious treats for later and, surprisingly, still have some in our fridge.

That night the school took us all out to dinner, and we had a never ending supply of different dishes being continuously brought to our table. Much of it was delicious, some of it was spicy, and some of it was fish served in ways we've never really seen before. Zac made faces. The most memorable moment of the night was when Zac looked at the principal and another administrator, and exclaimed, “Wow! You guys are having a lot of beer!” From then on, they tucked the beer cans under their seats.