Nuts & Fruits

I think I ate 6 juzi (the tangerine type fruit) yesterday, and I've already eaten three this morning.  Is that a problem? 

 

In other news concerning food, let me just say that hazelnuts are amazing!  I have found a wholesale shop that sells nuts, which tend to be fairly expensive around here.  One of their specialties is hazelnuts.  Although I've always loved the hazelnut flavor (think Nutella), I've never actually eaten a hazelnut before.  I definitely had to buy half a jin of them after they had me taste one!  (My only problem now is figuring out how to crack the shell on the ones that aren't already cracked.  I don't have a nutcracker here, nor do I think I could find one if I wanted to.  So far my teeth have worked out the best of anything.)

 

After finishing my classes last night, I stopped by Tesco (the supermarket) on my way home.  I was superbly excited to learn that it is actually possible to buy lemons and avocadoes there!　The lemons were basically two for 14 kuai, which isn't terrible for a fruit that is hard to get.  (To give some context to that, I could but about 16 bananas for the same price, or 60 juzi.  It would also be a reasonable amount for a very good Chinese meal for one in a restaurant.)  On the other hand, the avocadoes were 51 kuai per jin.  Ouch.  (A jin is 500 grams.  I'm not exactly sure how that relates back to avocadoes, because I've never actually weighed an avocado before.  But I normally buy peanuts for 8 kuai per jin and the hazelnuts, a real specialty, were 40 kuai per jin.) So needless to say, the guacamole will occur only on rare occasion.

 

Now for a story unrelated to food.  Yesterday my friend in the dorms decided he wanted to buy his own washing machine to keep in his bathroom.  Technically there are washers in the dorm, but for the seven floors there are only 4 washers.  And of those four usually only two work.  For a while none of them did.  Right.  So obviously the washers are not the most convenient thing around here, so I understand that this friend of mine - who will be here for another 3 years - wants something more convenient.  I had the afternoon free yesterday, so he and I went off in search of a small washer.  It was so entertaining! Instead of going to the major stores that would carry new ones, we found the "used appliances alley" nearby and set out to find a used washer that would suit his needs.  Turns out there wasn't one, so we'll have to go to the main store afterall, but I'm still glad we started in the alley.  How often do you get to see an alley full of old washers, refrigerators, toilets, freezers, etc, all for sale?  Or have fun using your Chinese with the alley salesmen who have possibly never had a foreign customer before?　

 

On another interesting note about costs here, the prices we were quoted for the washers were around 200 or 300 kuai.  That's only 2 or 3 kg of avocadoes!　(Or 7 drinks at Starbucks.)