Rumours of my demise are grossly exaggerated!
As usual, no news is good news on these trips
I have been having a wonderful time this trip I am very happy to report. Sunny and I are more loved up than ever :heart:
For most of my first week here we spent the days at her folks place . I have been spoiled rotten! The food is utterly incredible, if you like Chinese food than a weeks worth of home cooking will probably be your idea of heaven, mine certainly is!!
We made dumplings with auntie (mother is to be called auntie until we get married apparently) a couple of days ago and i am ashamed to admit i gorged myself in a style that would even make the dumpling monster Martin blush!! They gave me a big bowl of dumplings, which i polished off in no ti,me, then uncle gave me half of his plate, then auntie gave me about another five or so from the emergency (lao wai is running low stockpile), i think it was north of 25 or so before i was done :icon_twisted:
Thankfully for me this is a complement to aunties cooking and she wanted to discuss the wedding idea later...so i must have done good!
She gave her blessing and Sunny beamed from ear to ear as didi I, boy I was sweating it as she asked me very straight questions!
Sunny's sister was visiting GZ for the last week and it was the first time she saw her folks for a year so Sunny and I made a point of bringing her out with us, we went to the circus, to see Avatar - the first 3d movie any of us ever saw and was a massive hit with all!
I think probably this went down well with auntie and it was nice to see Sunny so happy so her smile of course made it worthwhile. Probably the next time the sister will see us will be at our wedding :heart:
I dunno if Ted has written about the weather the last week here in GZ already on the forum but boy oh boy, it was unbelievably cold!! Everyday was windy with a damp drizzly wind that just chilled totally to the bone. By the third day of it i cracked and said enough is enough, I REFUSE to be chilled like this, its just ridiculous to be soooooooo cold even indoors! So we got a heater fro 190RMB or so and the difference was like night and day in the apartment, even Sunny was clearly enjoying the warmth!
Its funny, one of her friends met a American on chnlove and he was visiting last week and he bought a heater on the same day, i just thought it funny that we both cracked on the same day! Lao wai must be good for the home heating business in GZ!!
The weather now is thankfully warming up again but the pollution is back, buildings only a 100 meters away look gray again - no doubt I'll have a sore throat tomorrow and a smokers cough again in a few days. yesterday it was sunny and so nice walking around in the warmth, i wish i took my camera. I brought it today but the light is terrible with pollution...she shedding of layers on the womenfolk is not the hardest on the eyes i have to admit though :icon_cheesygrin:
I am struggling with a problem - the apartment sunny rented for us is near Ganding area which is a bit computer part of the city - they have malls just for computer stuff and outside the street sellers sell all kinds of electronic stuff.
There are fake - every kind of phones. I am sooorely tempted to get one of those fake iphones!! There seems to be three types of them, a regular one without 3g, or wireless which sells for about 350RMB, one with wireless for about 570RMB and one with 3g for around 1200RMB I would like to get a wireless one but Sunny said the street seller told her that i needed to sign up to a data provider to use that - i think he is confusing it with 3g maybe? I had a look at it and there was a wireless option on it and i did connect to a wireless network but he took it back off me before i could figure out how to open a browser and try getting online with it - any techie types care to speculate on this? All the iphone clones have two simslots and little on-board memory the have an sd slot instead which would be fine at the price point.
That's all for now, Sunny is working this weekend (both Saturday and Sunday) to make up for the holiday days off, she is going to try and request some more time off next week. I hope we can meet up with Ted then for dinner.
I hope you all are having as nice a New Years holiday as I am (it really is like Christmas here, the Metro line wasn't packed for the last week, REALLY weird!!, but is back to normal jammers now).
At the end of the festival Sunny and I will visit her folks again for more good food and to enjoy ore fireworks, downtown Baghdad is not a patch on this place when the fireworks get going! The inner child in me really enjoys the noise and the spectacle!!
