Je m'appelle Justine: I may or may not be gaining weight.

All through training for English teacha (yes, teacha not teacher) training, I was informed to bring my crappiest clothes, because I'm just going to end up throwing away all the clothes I bring anyway. The washing machines are in the middle of the bathroom, and you have to hook it up to the water heater, and you can’t shower while washing clothes, because the water heater hose is the shower; they leave stains, they’re tiny, they ruin your clothes, etc. etc. Being the attentive, obedient English teacha I am, I bring my poopy clothes that I don’t care too much for; although I’m still hoping I don’t have to throw any away. Then ILP decides to plop me in the ritzy fashionville of China: Zhongshan. Yeah oooooookay. Everyone and their dog walks around in crazy heels, wedges, darling froofroo dresses, and MC Hammer pants (jumping on that bandwagon stat), while I’m just walking around in my ratty t-shirts and leggings. And our washer works just fine even while the shower is running.

Good thing I was born with a powerful gift for throwing money at vendors for cheap Chinese clothing that I have to fix afterwards with my nifty sewing kit (thank you, Grandma, for throwing a white elephant Christmas party last year). So I’ve been buying things left and right to make up for my lack of decent clothing. It’s actually supah fun. No complaints here.

While we’re talking about shopping, let’s talk about the other day when I was perusing the One Plus One Market here in Zhongshan, China. Two funny things happened:

1. I was looking for a dressing room to try on this darling dress I found and asked a girl where I could find one. Actually. Let me clarify. I didn’t ask the girl; I mimed my urgent question to her in an intricate and intense one-sided game of charades. I say one-sided, because after my elaborate dance, the girl responded with a curt “no.” After stumbling out “entschuldigen, uh, I mean xie xie, no, um crap I don’t know how to… uh sorry,” I kept browsing. Oddly enough, the girl gradually hedged closer to the clothes I was looking through until she was just standing in front of me, waiting for me to move so she could look through the clothes. Puleeez, girl. You just made me look like an idiot by not playing along with my game of charades, and now you want me to move so you can look through these clothes and find the jackpot before me? Uh uh. So I keep looking through the clothes as if I don’t see her. Finally she looks up at me and starts to mime something back. I can’t quite understand what she’s saying until she points over to the maternity clothes.

She thought I was preggo.

In my defense, I was wearing a maxi dress and holding up a baby doll top while trying to ask where the dressing rooms were.

Turns out dressing rooms don’t exist in China.

2. Second funny of the shopping trip: Chinglish. It’s everywhere.