Who Needs Cheese, Anyway?

I know this is kind of silly, but I just have to write about the ice cream bars here. You can buy them absolutely everywhere: street corners, grocery stores, at vendors evenly spaced 50 feet apart at the park. The main milk company around, which I think I mentioned before, is Mengnu ("the cow from Inner Mongolia") and really, it is just very very good. All of it, milk, yogurt, ice cream bars, is made from whole milk. That's right, you skim-milk and 2% Americans--whole milk. So all that weight we lost in the transition? It's slowly making its reappearance thanks to these babies.

I had to post about this ice cream bar for another reason. Samuel and Grace, 10 yuan note firmly grasped in grubby paws, actually went to the grocery store behind our apartment building by themselves, picked out four bars, stood patiently in the not-line for quite a while until the check-out lady took pity on their silly "stand-in-line like good customers" manners, and grabbed the bars out of their hands to check them out. [Here is another of those asides I am becoming increasingly fond of: It is particularly difficult buying groceries at peak hours because everyone shoves in front of you to get their groceries first. Remember the fearless old ladies crossing the big boulevards with nary a glance to left or right? The same ones are just as ruthless at the check-out line. The shorter, cuter, and more wizened, the more they push to the front. No problem. We just forgot to tell the kids about it.] But they survived and came racing home with our goodies and now, tummy full of oreo-stuffed, chocolate-clad, vanilla ice cream, I write about this great event. It's like the 1950s, no?, kids running to the corner store by themselves without fear of drug dealers, pedophiles, or speeding cars (well, maybe that last one...).

And I guess I have to say that, homesickness aside, I am growing fond of certain things about Hohhot, like the chugging of the farmers' tractors out front as they scoot along the road from farm to city and back again. It is a calm, steady, full sound, almost reassuring because it just passes by without honks or squeaks or blaring megaphone, and it always happens, from early morning to late evening. I like watching all the people, young and old, exercise at the exercise park at Manduhai, at all hours of the day, no matter how hot. I like packing up my new basket on my bike with nets, water, and asian pears and zipping off to the park with Grace behind me, Samuel and Kun Kun (I spelled his name wrong before--sounds like Quinn Quinn, spelled otherwise), just ahead of me. I don't like lugging my laundry two buildings over but I really like seeing it hanging on my lines on the balcony, like it is now. I like watching the barbeques being set up at night all along one street, the pool tables along another one, the card games everywhere in between, people gathering in the evening to visit and eat and just enjoy the end of the day.

Gee, I guess I should eat more ice cream bars--I get downright dreamy, don't I?