When in China... do as the Americans do

been quite a whirlwind trip the last couple weeks. honestly did not feel like vacation at all, mostly because we spent it with either my parents or aileen's parents the entire time. and that is quite an effort.


in any case, some quick musings from the last two weeks. 


- overall, my cousins from my side and aileen's side are super cool... would love to hang out with them more often.
- i didn't realize that i didn't see a cloud the whole time in beijing until we landed in qingdao. you can't even see two blocks without smog getting in the way.

- chinese people are extremely selfish and impatient. i'm glad that it's hard for them to enter the US.

- MIL is even weirder than i first thought. everything aileen complains about her was dead-on. she's like the most over-bearing yet not over-bearing MIL ever.  but i think it's worse that aileen does the exact same thing while simultaneously yelling at her mom about it.

- i will never again share a hotel room with a parent.

- just because i didn't get some status benefits, i was very upset. then i was even more upset knowing that i'm acting like my dad.

- chinese people sure like audi.

- MIL goes through one roll of TP a day!

- i'm going to be in sticker shock once i get back to the US.

- aileen's grandmother is extremely healthy for a 93 year old. i think aileen is going to live a very long time.

- i have to remind myself that the MIL grew up without a mom.

- i find aileen's chinese-speaking abiliity very sexy. made me want to speak korean... but not BE korean. big difference.

- i got approached by a prostitute in an elevator. she tried to follow me to my room. and i was definitely panicking on the inside.

- imported goods are so much more expensive in china. my tag watch is $3K. my S5 retails for 998K RMB, which is about $150K USD!!! a new iphone 3gs is $1K USD.

- chinese food consists of very little rice.

- people drink tsingtao beer like wine. it's served at room temperature and with wine glasses.

- chinese people are a lot nicer to you if they know you have a lot of money. doesn't matter if they are relatives, strangers, or anything else. i don't think it's as true for the US.

- tiannamen square riot picture of the student vs. the tank. i understand why it's such an impact now... a car actually stopped for a pedestrian.

- always check to see if the toilet flushes before using it.

- there are different tiers of counterfeit... the super cheap and the high-end (but still cheap).

- no matter how small (or large) you think the world is... it's still smaller.