Charlie Brown

On my way back from the supermarket, I discovered an amazing cafe that I really have to go to sometime soon. They're apparently all over Asia, and they're called The Charlie Brown Cafe. Since I didn't have time to go in, I only have pictures of the outside for now, though I have been told that the inside is just as fantastic.

Shopping Trip: Welcome to Carrefour

There isn't much behind this post. My roommate and I went to the supermarket--it's big, almost like a Walmart or Target, and it has a lot of imported food. Really, it has a lot of food in general. So, of course, we found some pretty hilarious and strange things to take pictures of. Starting with the gum.

I, myself, don't really understand the concept of doublemint gum that's flower or cucumber flavored, but I guess, compared to some of the other products, it's not too weird.

Next we found the chips.

All I can say is Hot & Spicy Hot Pot Flavor and Hot & Sour Fish Soup Flavor are not nearly as strange as the blueberry flavor we found later. I don't know why Chinese people feel inclined to eat blueberry flavored potato chips, or any of the other weird flavors for that matter. I tend to just stick with the normal flavors. Like American Flavor (plain), or Texas Barbecue, or Italian Red Meat. Not sure what that last one is, but it tastes like barbecue, and we bought it by accident.

While shopping for peanut butter and honey to make sandwiches, I came across some other odd products in the honey section.

I figured "Purity Honey" was just a bad translation of "pure honey". However, the "Honey Product for Ladies" actually seemed to be a direct translation. Which is why I bought a different brand.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

As you may have guessed from the title, our return trip from Chengde to Beijing went quite a bit less smoothly than the rest of the weekend had. First of all, we had train tickets but no seats. Because in China, trains do "standing room only". And boy do they mean it.

The first hour or so of the trip wasn't too bad. We hung out in the really narrow aisles and played Uno, though we had to get up every few minutes for people to walk through. The aisles were so narrow that an airplane food cart wouldn't have fit through them.

The next leg of the trip, after a considerable amount of people had boarded, and not many had gotten off, was a little less comfortable. Comparatively, at least.

This is what the car looked like during the relatively empty times:

and this is what it looked like when we were not as lucky...