Being stalked by the shop clerks

I was holding off from blogging because I remember how I felt like it took up so much of my time before. Maybe that was because previously I was in the midst of the chaos of having our first baby. Now I'm thinking that blogging a bit might be something worth reading later on and it might help me with the situations I'm experiencing and lack of having anybody to talk to about them. The hardest part of being here is being alone most of the time. I guess you can never have it all at the same time - free time, money, and friends.

I'm not working while we're here, unless I decide to go and teach English, or something along those lines. So I've been cooking a lot. We don't have an oven in our apartment - they're not that common - and we bought a toaster oven recently. (At some point I'll write another blog entry about the scavenger hunt of finding certain ingredients. And the process and experience of buying a "bigger ticket item" like a toaster oven.) I recently ran across baking yeast; the kind you'd use to make bread. Since I have the time and the internet to tell me how, I was thinking I'd make bread while we're here. Why not? It's something I've played with a couple of times and it's something that Dylan eats quite a bit of. I'm not really such a big bread fan, though I will eat it from time to time.

There's a boutique store in this shopping plaza about a mile from our house that has niche baking things; bread pans and small silicon mini-cupcake sheets. I might not need to mention that this place is expensive for China. I'm guess that's because it's really targeting foreigners with it's products. The shop is small enough that you can see everything in the store from anywhere else in the store. There are no tall shelves or places to hide while you might shoplift something. Even though I know that has nothing to do with the experience I frequently have while shopping, and the experience I had again today.

I walk into this shop and immediately the two only employees are within a couple feet of me. They stand so close that they are actually in the way if I wanted to walk down the aisle and browse. When I reach to see a price tag, one that is sitting visible on the table, they try and beat me to it, so they can tell me the price. If I move around at all, they follow me closely. This experience is not particular to this store. I have this experience pretty much every time I walk into a store and it sometimes drives me crazy. If you look at it a certain way, it's sort of funny because when I'm not in the mood to ignore this stalking it prevents me from buying anything because I walk out so quickly. I don't really enjoy shopping anyway, so this is just icing on the cake. I did discover that if I go to a shop when it's slammed - like the weekend - I get a lot less attention.

I'm getting better at ignoring people, and not caring when I'm clearly being stared at, watched, or shopping clerk stalked. I care a lot less now than I did when I arrived. I had to or I'd go crazy. But I still have my moments when it just drives me to stay home, or to starbucks with my nose in my computer or a book. Sometimes I don't understand because there are actually a fair number of westerners here. I can easily see 20 in a day.

I stick out for reasons that go beyond my western-ness. Like my clothes, and my light colored hair, and my size. I stick out because I'm not one of maybe 95% of the women here who are wearing high heels. I'm not wearing girl shoes either, so I stick out from that other 5% as well. I'm not wearing dark drab colors or a skirt. My hair is still stuffed into a sloppy bun, unlike all the carefully dressed women here. I more closely match the workers who sweep the streets than the average women here.

So here I am, writing this after fleeing the cookery boutique without my bread pan. Maybe tomorrow I'll try again. I think the yeast will wait until then.