Hou Hia and our first bartering session....

Today we all met at Lama Temple Subway satation and got a taxi to Hou Hai its a big ex-pat area with lots of bars and western food. Had a yummy lunch there and discussed the "new arrangements" that is we'll be teaching 4 days mon-thurs (except for poor pip who agreed to 5!) so fridays are now free!! YAY after a nice jacket potato and pizza we walked down the street that had heaps of souviner shopa but at ridiculous touristy prices so bought nothing there. Except this little shop ahd a man sitting in the back with some fancy tea table and he kept pouring us glass after glass of the most amazing tasting tea..it was great! Black lychee tea and mixed fruit tea!!

Ohhh ang it was freeezing today -9...it was ok under your clothes but any exposed skin was numb.

I saw a bakery thing with a line the size of the great wall and seeing a have a soft spot for pastry I lined up to get a geezer. I just pointed to a few different things and they fill plastic bags with lite 50 little pastry shapes and I got 2 bags one was just pastry things with sugar on them and the otehr things had cream in the middle! sooo good and I got 2 egg tarts (the best!). After us all feeling sick from those we got a taxi to Sanlitun Clothing Market...(if anyone comes to visit I am taking them here!) its indoor and 5 huge levels of everything!! from perfume to coats to digital cameras...so we were there for about 2 and a half hours. Vik and I bought big winter coats for Melbourne which they wanted to charge 650 Yuan for and we ended up getting them for 100 and 130 which was about $35 Austrlian.

I bought my favourite perfume Stella which is $65 for 25 mL and I got 100 mL for $70!!! bought a thick Abercrombe jumper for less then $20. And lucky last...I bought a good 10 mega pixel camera that was around 2800 yuan and I ended up getting it for 1800yuan...BUT!! I was told by Viki and Peta : that they were around $650 australian and I agreed to pay $400 austlian at 1800 Yuan...thinking I got an awesome deal saving $250 bucks I come home a look on the net just to check....There selling on the net for like $200!!!!!!! so looks like I bombed out there but its a great camera and it was only released late last year apparently so I'll get over it...(WAIT....Viki rang me all high and mighty :) and said on the canon website the camera I bought was $690 austrlian dollars and there no way it could be that cheap!!) so really I saved $300 australian which makes me feel a whole lot better! Thanks Vik and Rosie haha...

Not really looking forward to another week at Kinder but thank goodness its only 4 days AND we're are going to the Ballet on saturday at the big theatre near Tien'namen Square. It's the Shanghi Ballet and it looked really good so can't wait.