Shenzhen shop-a-thon

As I mentioned last week, things have been quite busy lately. I have a lot of work to get through (lecture, research, etc) and then on top of that my mom is visiting this week with her friend (an old Argentinian-Armen!an lady). Since Sunday was the only free day I could go with them, they asked me to take them across the border to Shenzhen. I took them to Dongmen street, the same place I took my mom last November when she visited last:

Here they are in front of the first McDonalds in China. As you can see, it was pretty packed. Since this area and the border crossing area are rife with pickpockets, I figured it was safer if I held on to all the $$$ and the passports. Of course the problem is that means I gotta be involved in all the transactions (plus i had to do all the arguing over price in Chinese anyway...)

So in that respect, these two stores were my favorite... The one on the right is and the one on the left is . Much was spent here....

After a full afternoon of shopping we took a taxi over to my new favorite dining experience in China.
(introduced to you in such blog entries as this one). There are actually two locations in Shenzhen, we tried the original location, which is located in a fancy mall full of high end retailers (a far cry from the street vendors we just left).

As you may recall,
is quite high end dining in China. Not like its fast food brother in the US... As my mom's friend Se Habla Español, she tried to figure out what Spanish words the YUM Corporation of China has forced these employees to learn besides "Hola" and "Adios!" -- apparently not much.

but the food was pretty good. I got the Chicken Enchilada. It came out to be about $7 per person. Adios!

Afterwards we headed back towards the border. We did another hour or two of watch and jewelry shopping in the Luo Wu center, which I really hate because the hawkers are much more aggressive and try to speak to us in English: "Hey Missy! Rolex! Gucci! Missy come here!" - And since they get the direct flow of shoppers from the border, they try to gough you on the prices more. We got one woman selling watches down from like 500 rmb to 120 rmb. ($60+ to ~$15). quite annoying!

After all that running around, I decided to introduce them to the wonder of china besides bargin knock-offs:

Oh yes, the $4.25 1-hour foot massage.

They got a big kick out of it, and enjoyed getting a chance to meet some 'real' people face to face. They made me give a big tip (for some reason in SZ you can tip at foot massage, unlike everywhere else in china), so the total cost ended up being $7.50 per person.

I also got to enjoy a cup of delicious .

Once we were back at home they divided up the goods....

whew, what a long day. Hopefully they can keep eachother busy the rest of the week so I can catch up on my work.