Crowds

Typically at home I do most of my shopping (groceries, target, etc.)during the week. The crowds are much smaller, shorter lines, easier to browse, etc. The down side is that usually I have at least 1 child in tow. So this makes things very unpredictable- some days great -easy to browse (child very entertained in stroller or cart) other days not so good- not even able to get everything on my list because of the screaming. Benefit of shopping on the weekend - leave all children with Mark. But with the crowds I usually get frustrated and end the trip early. Well - here in China - weekdays are like weekends in Westchester and weekends are like being at Disney World during Spring Break. Shanghai is a city of over 20 million people and they are all out on the weekends! So this particular day we headed to the B&Q (Home Depot of China) to quickly buy some patio furniture and then we were headed to Jade Buddha Temple for some sightseeing. We arrived at the B&Q early to beat the crowd and were pleasantly suprised by how empty it was. We quickly selected the furniture (a large table, chairs, umbrella, and stand for adults and a small table with 2 benches for the kids) and we had a few men helping us. As these men started getting multiple carts and loading huge boxes into the carts we tried to explain we wanted it delivered. We had bought a BBQ grill a few weeks ago and they delivered it to our house so we knew they delivered. Since the language is impossible I have really resorted to playing charades. So me pretending to push a wheel barrel was not getting the message across. Our last resort was our driver Mr. Xu. Now poor Mr. Xu speaks VERY little English, but we try with him all the time anyway. When I go and get him to help me he always says "Pam I no good". So we drag Mr. Xu into B&Q and tell him to tell them to bring to Vizcaya. So the men continue to load multiple boxes into carts and wheel them to the check out. At the check out, they are scanning all the boxes and Mark is ready to pay and all of the sudden they understand delivery. So they wheel the carts away and the woman at the check out clears out the transaction. We have now officailly been at the B&Q for one hour and we have not paid, but have convinced them to deliver. Needless to say we spent another hour trying to pay and arrange the delivery day. So after 2 hours in the B&Q everyone was starving so we headed to lunch and decided we just could not do the Jade Buddha Temple. We instead headed to Yu Garden to walk around. Yu Garden is a very touristy place so between the guided tours and some kind of food festival going on it was once again overwhelming. So we found Mark's favorite donut place and headed in for a snack. Of course the donut shop was empty(Chinese do not like sweets)- so we escaped the crowd and enjoyed a sweet treat!