We made it!

Well, we made it to the mall and back safely! We had a good time, but it wasn't terribly relaxing. If you think malls are crowded at home on the weekends you should have seen the people at this mall!! People were everywhere - it ended up being quite the cultural experience.

We started with a Whopper, Jr. value meal at Burger King - Mark had Pepsi, Melissa had an off-brand "Fanta" orange drink. Then we wandered around looking at the different stores in the mall - quite a few name brands we recognized from home. The least enjoyable part of the experience was our real shopping at this huge Wal-mart like store. To get a cart you have to insert a coin into this chain/lock kind of thing and it releases the cart from the other carts. So we did that and were off to look for all the random things on our shopping list. Some things we found, some things we didn't find, and some things we thought we found until we got home, unpackaged them and found out that it wasn't exactly what we thought it was!! Overall, it was successful though. We got the most important things. Then we made it through the check-out line, got the warranty papers completed for a couple of things (every electronic gadget here comes with a warranty and you have to go to a separate customer service desk to get it done after checking out - it's not a difficult process, just time-consuming), returned one of our carts, and unloaded all of our stuff into the van. Whew!!! I'm tired just thinking about it all again!

After that we decided to check out the movies. Nothing good was playing, so we decided to skip the movie and go straight for the Starbucks - YUMMY!! It really was delicious! Wish we could sit down with some of you with a hot cup of coffee and catch up.

So now we're back home and back to life as usual - washing clothes, washing dishes, sweeping the floor, gathering the trash, etc. Oh yeah, and putting together the things we bought that didn't come pre-assembled. You know how that goes!

We have a busy schedule this week, but I'll try to post again as soon as I can. Take care!