One more day...

Only one more day and then I travel on Saturday to India for most of a week. I've certainly had a wonderful -- but tiring -- time here!

Dinner today was at a very nice place called "Yos-Mite". That's not "Yosemite". However, a few of the menu items did have "Yosemite" in their English descriptions. They menu was very nicely done but the English descriptions were simply awful. We (me -- of course -- and Shelen and Jenny) all got a huge laugh from this description (read this really closely): "Clickin Feet with Red Paper". Any idea what it should have read? It should have been "Chicken Feet with Red Pepper". What a hoot! The whole menu was like that. For such a nicely done menu, it was a shame that the proofreading was left out. Of course, the ladies certainly gave me the business about looking so closely at the menu...it's just like a Quality guy, they said...

At dinner we actually didn't have chopsticks. This is the first meal other than breakfast where I haven't had chopsticks and I have to say, it felt wierd! We had a nice Korean rice stir-fry, and a very small pizza with lots of stuff on it (I had to pick around the mushrooms, of course), and garlic toast (my own contribution to the dining selections). The stir-fry had two large shrimp on it, and in keeping with the other food here, they had their heads still on, complete with these huge shrimp antennae! Those things must have been 6 or 7 inches long! I must say, those little suckers have very beady eyes, too!

Also during dinner tonight I asked a little more about some of the customs here. I had noticed that very, very few people (men and women both) wear wedding rings even though they're clearly married. It just doesn't seem to be a common custom here.

I have noticed that the Chinese food I've had here is very often covered in some form of a glaze. It's really common. As are the vegetables. They are ubiquitous. If you like your veggies, you will not starve here. Just get used to not always recognizing the vegetables, because there are a lot of different-looking ones.

Today we finished all the planned training of my trip, right on schedule and really a few hours early. It feels good to be done but I'm having mixed feelings about leaving my new friends. Tomorrow we wrap up and talk about next steps with the team here. And everyone, almost 30 of us, are going to go out to lunch together. I think that will be a big hit.

After we finished up today, one of the ladies on the team came into the training room with her camera to get a picture of her with me. As she came in, 2 or 3 others streamed in behind her. Before we finished up, there were probably 8 0r 9 team members all getting their pictures taken with their FAVORITE TEACHER of Quality concepts. (Of couse, I am their ONLY teacher of Quality concepts so far...:-) )

Some more on the taxis. Pretty much all the taxis in the city are run by the Xi'an Taxi Service. They all have these little indicators on their dashboards that the driver flips horizontal when he/she has a fare and flips back up to indicate he's available. There are little receipt printers in each taxi. And there's that little old Chinese lady's voice that I mentioned before, that speaks at the time the driver flips the indicator down and again when it goes back up. The taxi fares all start at 6RMB minimum and that fare won't change until you've been in the car for a few minutes. The taxi from the hotel to the office or back to the hotel should be 12-13RMB. That makes it somewhere around $1.50US. The taxi fare is always rounded, too, to the nearest whole RMB value. There are no seat belts in these cars. The back seats have all had seat-covers made of some form of wicker or thin wood. Probably they are easier to clean that way. Many also have grates between the front and back seats. You can probably get by without speaking at all to the driver if you can get him pointed to your destination, but it's still courteous to tell him "xiexie" (pronounced "sheh-sheh" or "shey-shey") when he drops you off. But as the little old Chinese lady reminds you, "Please take care of your belongings all the time and axe the driver for receipt!" (My goodness, doesn't that sound like a violent request?)

Duncan has also created little paper slips that we can use to show the taxi driver when we want to go to the office or back to the hotel. That's a nice bit of help and it makes things easier.

More words. The folks here are far more comfortable with the word "bug" as opposed to "defect". I found myself modifying how I spoke to the slides, on the fly, to use "bug" instead.

Here's another word: I have no idea how to spell it in English, but it's pronounced "shweh-BEE". It's the way to say "Sprite", as in the soft drink. Similarly, "kah-koh-kah-LAH" is how to say "Coca Cola". At least that one is almost recognizeable... :-) As far as soft drinks go, the only Western ones I've seen are Coke, Diet Coke (Coke Light) and Sprite. Oh, yeah, I did see Pepsi in the hypermarket but I have never seen it in a restaurant.

More on the credit card thing I mentioned yesterday. I think it's truly a problem. Shelen called around to about 20 restaurants today looking for someplace to take the team, that would take American Express. No luck. I'm wondering if it makes sense to get one or more cards in the Company name from local financial institutions that can be used for our travelers. I'm afraid that otherwise we would need much more cash than we might be comfortable carrying. Of course, for me that hasn't been a big problem because everyone has been paying for my meals and things and won't let me pay!

I forgot to mention yesterday that I got to see a short rainbow on the taxi ride back to the hotel. That was a nice thing.

I have noticed quite a few car-service facilities here on my rides around in the taxis. One of them has the rather oddly-titled name "Friend of Car". I actually have seen one or two dealerships, but no more.

Today the taxi I took to the office had an extra passenger: this huge cricket! That was strange. And the cicadas are going full blast here. It took me a few days to figure out what the noise was because they don't sound that much like the ones in Ohio until you figure it out and make the connection. I even saw two on a tree last Saturday when Cathy, Andy, and I were at the Hot Springs Ruins. They looked quite a bit like the ones in Ohio.

Well, that's it for today. Sorry to disappoint those of you expecting another culinary experiment! Tomorrow should be fun and I'm sure I'll have some more good stories to tell about our team lunch. Until then...