completing my missions

On foreign countries some things you need to do becomes a "task" sometime.

yesterday i had 3 tasks:

1. buy a sim card for my mobile phone

I went with irit out of our Hotel armed with a map and a dictionary. We wanted to go to a market and had to ask where the bus stop was, but before hand had to go to china mobile store in order to buy the card for the phone. so we asked one of the hotel staff members where is the bus stop for but number XXX , going to the market. he started walking with us. When we saw that we are not really walking towards the china Mobil store, it took us quite long minutes to explain him that he can go back to the hotel and we will go to the bus station by ourselves later ( i.e we will find it later by ourselves).

Finally after a short walk we reached china mobile. All dressed up very officially in uniform they asked us to go to a computer and choose a number we want to have. I chose a nice one ( an "okay" number, don't get too excited).


then we went to the one lady at the counter, she said that it's going to cost minimum of 25 yuan per month. I knew i had no chance explaining them by myself that i want a prepaid card ( when i got home i understood from avi that all cellular phone lines here are prepaid, or at least that's what WE understand). So I just looked it up in the dictionary and showed them the word. I asked them, of course, how to say it...so they did. But don't ask me what it was.

TASK: buy a sim card for the cellphone: Succeed!

2. Take the bus going to the market

Going out of china mobile we started to look for our bus stop. It's pretty hard asking people where is the bus stop when you don't know how to say "bus" ( I learned it this morning, don't worry). So I'm finding myself holding a dictionary in the middle of the street showing people the word: "bus". The bus stop was pretty far ( I'm sure there is a closer one that the guy from the hotel wanted to show us.....). On the way to find that bus stop, we found a different bus stop going to the market we wanted to go. so we waited 2 minutes and the but came. We go on the bus with all the people. I'm taking 10 yuan out of my wallet and giving it to the driver. His response: nodding "no" with his head. oh, we need small change to get on the bus. Costs 1 (Yi) yuan per person.

When we got of the bus Irit goes: "let's just walk..." ( It was 1 KM away)

TASK: Take the bus going to the market - failed!

3. TASK: Find the market, but some low cost clothing.

We started walking down the street towards the market which suppose to be near a square. After 15 minutes walk we got to the square. On our map there is a small drawing of the building we were looking for. We look around, none of the buildings look like the one we are searching for. We started walking around the square ( it was a circle, what you think!?), it was a BIG square!

We asked one policeman that pointed to a building, we got there and it didn't seem as the right one. keep asking...Irit point on a couple walking together. "Ask them" , she says. We point at the building at the map...the girl answers in ENGLISH! wow! she knew a few words...She explained and pointed at the building...It was right at the point where we started ( did i mention it was a big square?)

moving on...we got to the market....which actually became a store. Not really the low cost stuff we were looking for ( you thought that china would be easy to find low cost clothing...well...NOT!). We went into the store, 8 floors of expensive clothing...I said: "i think we got something wrong here" ( Our guide from Sunday told us about a market. Then talked about a store. Thinking these too were the same place, apparently was wrong....that's what we understood on Sunday from an English speaker guide! ).

So eventually after walking down town and circling the BIG square , we were at the store for 10-15 minutes and got a taxi back..

TASK: Find the market, but some low cost clothing - failed.

33% of success....failed!


Today was much better. We found the market( succeed! but, bought only one t-shirt), got there by taxi (FAILED! - I fell asleep on the couch, so it was to late for time consuming adventures).

50% of success...still failed..but improving...

p.s ignore my spelling mistakes :)