Happiness is Friends, Food, and my Asian-Sized Yellow Backpack...

The perfect ending to my China adventures would be spending time with one of my most favorite people in one of my most favorite places in China - the food street! Abby and I wandered down the food street smelling all the smells and pondering what we should eat for the evening. The locals on the food street were getting used to us and we did not elicit as many stares this time around.

We finally settled on steamed buns filled with meat and an enormous bread pancake thing. I informed Abby that she was an expensive date because the whole evening of deliciousness cost us $1.50. We unanimously decided to splurge and get fancy desserts at the fancy bakery. That brought our grand total to $4.50. How could I ever leave such a food paradise and come back to America where $4.50 won’t even get me a burger and fries. Tears…

I think heaven may be a little like the food street in China, sitting with a good friend, eating whatever you want with no concern for the price in a closet-sized restaurant. Ah, I will miss this place.

I must mention that in all of the food excitement, I left one of my most favorite purchases from China in one of those closet-sized restaurants. I didn’t realize this until I was getting ready for bed. Abby graciously walked back with me to the food street, and lo and behold my yellow backpack was sitting on the very stool I left it on.

You may wonder why this yellow backpack was such a big deal to me. Well…on the way to China I had an amazing backpack that I could pack a ton in except that this backpack was made in America and I wasn’t. In retrospect I think I could fit my whole self in this amazing backpack. I am a very Asian sized person. Let’s just say that my back hurt a ton, and if you were walking behind me, you only saw a backpack with legs attached to it walking through the airport.

After one morning of hauling the almost empty backpack around China and almost dying from exhaustion, I went hunting for an Asian-sized backpack - better known in America as a kid-sized backpack. I found one. I loved it. It fit, and I bartered with a cute Chinese saleswoman over it. I felt like I won the exchange but in hindsight she probably did. She did fain extreme disappointment when I would not budge on the price any more.

BTW, the only downside to my new and improved yellow backpack is that I didn’t realize that it is an exact match color-wise to my favorite pair of pants. Now when you walk behind me in the airport, you think, “Who would intentionally dress their entire body in mustard yellow?” I realized how odd I looked when a man in the Salt Lake City airport said to me, “Wow! I’ve never seen anyone match their backpack and their pants so well before!” I really don’t think it was a compliment. I still wear the pants and carry the backpack and feel like it’s my way of entertaining the world and relating to the famous people of Walmart that get photographed for their equally strange ensembles.

Off to bed I went. Tomorrow - Korea!