After one week here Deb and I have fallen into something of a routine. This may change once Deb starts teaching but for now, it goes something like this.

We wake up around 7:00 to 7:30 AM when it's just beginning to get bright outside. If it's not raining, we'll hear what sounds like ice skating rink music coming from the nearby basketball court, where the local middle aged women are doing some kind of exercise/dance routine (which Deb assures me is not Tai Chi, but that's my general impression.)

Because we have solar heated hot water, and because we have had about one hour unclouded sunlight since we've been here, we have to use boiled water if we want to take a hot shower. But calling it a shower may give you the wrong impression. If you've traveled in Southeast Asia you're probably familiar with the technique, which Deb and I refer to as a "mandi," the name for it in Indonesia, where we first practiced it.

First you need a place where you can splash a lot of water without making a total mess. In our case, since we have what looks like a real shower in real bathtub, we set up there. Then you need a large shallow basin, something that holds about 2 or 3 gallons of water. Bring the basin into the bathtub and pour in about a half gallon of hot water (boiled the night before and stored in one of our two huge, standard issue Chinese thermos bottles. This is one area in which Chinese technology truly surpasses ours; I believe that these thermoses would keep water hot from the Ming Dynasty.)

Mix in cold water to get a reasonable temperature. Take the large handled water dipper (bought in our marathon shopping session) and start pouring water over yourself. It helps if you crouch. Keep doing this until you are bored or cold or both; you probably won't be completely clean (armpits are a challenge) but you'll smell better than you would otherwise.

Now we move on to breakfast. The "Huashi Black Sesame Oatemeal" that we bought is pretty tasty, but it fails to contain anything that resembles oatmeal. So we mix it with oatmeal and add more hot water from the indispensable thermos. After breakfast, we sometimes try to do a little work. Deb will practice Chinese, I'll do some programming on the computer. But sooner or later we decide to go out shopping. This has got to be our primary source of entertainment. (It is ironic that we have had to come to one of the few true socialist republics on earth in order to become dedicated capitalist consumers.)

The most entertaining place to shop is definitely the "N-Mart Super Value Center." This is an aircraft hanger sized building where Chinese yuppies go to buy items too exotic for the local neighborhoods. It is the only place I have ever seen donuts in China. It's also where we buy oatmeal. But food is not the half of it. Last time we were there, they had a special on what looked like a badminton racket (a popular sport here) but what was in fact a portable, personal bug zapper. After loading it with batteries and juicing it up you swing the thing at unsuspecting insects, swatting them with 10,000 volts! The instructions included a caution against testing to see if the paddle was working by touching the wire grid with your finger (oops!) We live in the land of no lawyers and no OSHA.

Another time they were demonstrating the type of thing that I imagine is advertised on late night TV. It was a device that allowed you to wash both the inside and the outside of your apartment windows at the same time. A young Chinese woman stood next to a large framed pane of glass. She held a fist sized pad in one hand and dragged it up and down the window pane. On the other side of the glass, a similar fist sized pad followed her every move. Occasionally, she dunked both pads in a big soapy bucket of water at her feet. The whole process was very messy and even after her demonstration the sample window looked streaky and filmy. I think there is a big opportunity here for Windex(TM).

After stocking up on provisions, we go home to cook. Our kitchen is modestly but adequately equipped. We have a rice cooker, a wok and a small soup pot. Deb is becoming an expert at creating simple but delicious meals using our limited supplies. But one thing our kitchen lacks is a table. So we take our plates into the living room and eat sitting at our coffee table.

If shopping has not already made us into typical Americans, our new eating habits have. When we sit at the coffee table, on our sofa, we face our lovely new 25" color TV. We manage to leave it off during breakfast and lunch, but at dinner time, out comes the remote and we become couch potatoes.

It's not as if there is even anything interesting to watch. We try to tune in the English-language newscast, but more often than not, the sound is inaudible. So we flip randomly from station to station, looking for pictures of world leaders whom we can identify, or dramatic footage of train wrecks, mudslides, or wildfires. These are rare; most of the TV news consists of slow, panning shots across large meeting halls where dozens of bored Chinese sit listening to speeches.

We are fairly naive when it comes to what can be expected on a TV broadcast. But the other night we saw something that we found truly shocking. Up until this point, our most unsettling TV broadcasts were in Cambodia, where reports of traffic accidents never failed to include close-ups of bloody dead bodies. That has now been topped by Chinese television, where we have just seen live close-ups of zits being popped.

In a kind of an infomercial, an attractive Chinese woman with a microphone stops pizza-faced teenagers on the street and persuades them to allow her to begin a mildly sadistic facial treatment. One of her assistants emerges with a something like a dental instrument with a small wire loop at the tip. She brings this up to the victim's face, the camera zooms in, and the loop gets pressed around a zit. With one deft flick of the wrist, the zit is decapitated and a cotton swab daubs the injury with what is presumably a soothing ointment (but which may very well be hydrochloric acid, based on the level of sympathy demonstrated by the previous treatment.)

Then the program cuts to some cartoon-like animations (think of stomach acid commercials from the 60's and 70's, or a Walt Disney produced film on dental hygiene or sex education) which purport to "scientifically" explain the rationale of this skin care regime. After several product shots and repeated announcements of the product name, we are shown the smiling "after" shots of the teenagers, who now have Hollywood-perfect, peaches and cream complexions.

This is generally all we can handle in one day. Once or twice we have eaten dinner in a restaurant. It is very inexpensive (two vegetable plates, a tofu "main course," rice, tea, and beer costs well under two dollars) but we can never keep a low profile in public (we are still a big novelty in town.) Being at home at the end of the day can be a refuge. We sleep nine or more hours a night and never feel rested; I don't think we have ever been in a more exciting day-to-day environment.

What we do is in many ways ordinary, but it is never dull. We have a hyper-sensitive level of awareness that would be impossible to maintain at home. I hope we can hold on to it here as long as possible.