Saturday 30th April - Not much change from 4,000 dollars!

I had trouble sleeping last night so I decided to go and help in the breakfast store and sleep after work. I go with Eve and her dad looks up and says "Good Morning" I know from his expression he is surprised to see me. The suprise is followed by her mum and her brother-in-law Lee Yuan. I am happy to be doing something to be honest. Not doing anything is giving me too much time to think, I want to keep busy and not succumb to being homesick.

I am working away with the preparations for opening, the employees come in at different times and they are surprised and excited to see the foreigner. It is kind of cool to watch people come in slightly tired and almost drop out of reality to see me working there, I wonder if a few of them think they are seeing things. At 5am all the employees are at work so our stuff is finished and we can eat. I go for some fried rice and then try a steamed bun (which is awesome, but hard to describe). Then we go to our place to finally sleep.

 We are both knackered and fall asleep until 3pm, which is going to mean for me it will be difficult to sleep tonight. We go have some lunch. The way things work in here for eating are as follows: You go next door to the parents house, there will be a table full of food, you take some rice and then help yourself at anytime you want. Eat as much as you want, they prefer that to food being wasted and there are various things you can just help yourself too like amazing tasty fruit.

We plan to have lunch and then head to the shops to buy some trainers and shorts etc for me and a bike helmet (as Jheng Shin's is too big for me and rattles around when I turn my head). We are about to leave when we are visited by Eve's sisters godparents. They are really cool and they bring two massive watermellons, they are from a province famous for watermellon. They can speak some english so we have a conversation and eat. At Jheng shins advice we do some research online to have an idea of price ranges of helmets. However, the store is far away downtown and we dont have enough time so we decide to get the clothing instead which is not that far from home. We head off on the scooter and arrive at a shoe store that has a sale up to 15% off, it appears though that here they dont say 15% off they say the price is 85%. I get a pair of Nike running shoes that are 2000 dollars (£30). Then off to a sports store, I buy some basketball shorts for lounging around in etc, the shop doesn't take card (not all places do around here) so we have to go to the bank.

After purchasing them we head back home to have some more food and close out our usual nightly routine. The breakfast store is closed on Sunday which means we dont have to get up early. Tomorrow we plan to go downtown and get the Helmet.