Thursday, Shopping Trip!

Thursday we met our driver in the lobby to begin our day in Shenzhen. It was raining hard so we went to the "famous shopping center". Rene describes it as a MEGA Chinatown x's 10! Luckily, we had Kathy with us who can speak Chinese and GREAT English. (I have to say, Kathy had never been there because she pretty much buys the real stuff!) Anyway, I think she had fun with us because she bought items too. We spent close to 5 hours there and bought pearls, sunglasses, shoes, and other jewelry. We also had a pedicure and manicure. No Tommy Bahamas for Mike. We couldn't find the store. The mega mall was 5 stories high. Shopping became overwhelming because there were about 4 sales people for every 10 ft of space and they started calling out to us "missy, want to buy sunglasses, bag, dvd" for every step we took.

Erin, we spent the most time on negotiating and picking a black bag for you. Kathy, our lifeline, insisted that it had to be a quality bag. The sales lady said her goods were A++ but when they called the warehouse for the sample, Kathy said, "No, it wasn't good enough." We spent at least an hour or more there with panicked sales people as the police walked by and catalogs and bags were whisked away and conversations were changed. I'm not even sure what I bought you yet because the "driver" took it back to the office so we wouldn't have to walk around with it. Don't get too excited, Erin, it is a basic black bag! 

After all of that we drove to the sea. "The Sea World"...not like in America. It was a beautiful area by the sea. There were lots of restaurants and people enjoying the outdoors. My favorite part was watching the children rollerblade, skateboard and play around a center area with mothers and fathers helping and watching. The roller blades flashed lights as they bladed around.