Matthew and I went to the police station just down the road to register with them. All foreigners have to register with the police if they are not staying in a hotel. When we went in they didn't speak English so we showed them what Jinpeng wrote for us. They then took us back to our apartment complex, thinking that we were asking for directions. It was a really hard as our phrase books had nothing like "accommodation registration form" in them. Finally I called Longtian and she was able to tell them enough that they understood what we needed to do. The three police that had walked us to the apartment then walked us back to the police station. One of them spoke some English and he told us to wait, that an officer who spoke better English was coming. When she got there she gave him a look like why wasn't he dealing with it. Turns out her English wasn't that much better than his but at least we were getting the paper work filled out. It took about an hour and a half to get everything filled out and then we had forgotten to bring our pictures so they told us to come back the next day. At least now we are registered to live here and don't have to worry about that anymore.
After the escapade with the police we went downtown to get money from an ATM, as we were nearly out of cash. On our way to the bank we saw a woman getting a massage and she was holding her rather large puppy in her lap. Definitely picture worthy.
We went to a small Western style restaurant. Aomai's Kitchen had just opened at the new location so everything was discounted, otherwise it would have been pretty expensive. We got a pizza, pretty good as I was starting to get tired of the food here. I also got a watermelon juice, really good, until I started comparing it to what I had in Costa Rica. Comparison aside it was good and I would get it again. It was a nice little place and was great before a bunch of Chinese men came and sat down and were smoking. Even then it was much better than a lot of other places we have been to. Not as smokey.
After dinner we went to the grocery store in the Mall. I think it is more like a fresh market of sorts. Things were pretty expensive. Matthew and I could have gotten a $10 box of cereal. Trust me it was tempting. Instead we got oatmeal and sugar. We also got fruit as we didn't seem to know how to buy it at Wal Mart.
On the way back we stopped at Wal Mart and got an extra mattress pad for the bed and another pillow. We got the thickest pad we found but it was still pretty thin. My hope is that it will at least take away from the bone hurting of the thin, hard mattress we have.
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