Work on Friday was the same old business, study Chinese and then work in the factory. It was my last day in the packaging area and I spent it putting clothes in wrappers. Instead of the usual boring afternoon, I actually talked to someone today. His name was Shi Gong and was 22 and spoke decent English. The conversation was brief but I was glad I actually got to speak with someone (most days are me by myself doing some monotonous task). As I stated before, this past weekend I was home alone. Friday afternoon I took a shower, I prepared my dinner of fettuccine alfredo, then happily ate it before going to bed at 8 o'clock, I was very tired. The next day I woke up late, finished off my pasta, and got ready because some coworkers and my tutor were going to take me shopping. Although I didn't really have need for anything, they somehow mistook something I said and interpreted it as me wanting to go shopping for ties. We went downtown to the main mall and I got the chance to look around. Pretty much everything I looked at cost the same as it would have in the states or more (probably because the clothes were imported from abroad). I bought 2 pairs of 3/4 soccer pants because although they were not cheaper, they are very hard to find in the states. I got an idea of what was for sale in the mall but figured that there were probably cheaper local stores around so I'd wait to buy things later.

After the mall we went to a Chinese bakery, but I've learned that Chinese bread is not as good as Western bread. I picked up a few things for breakfast and paid, and got 5 yuan in change. They told me that for 5 yuan I could buy anything that was tagged at 12 yuan, I looked but didn't find anything good. But for 15 yuan I saw a good looking slice of chocolate cake. I told the workers I'd give them 8 yuan for the cake but they refused. It didn't make any sense to me because both offers were discounts of 7 yuan, maybe they weren't good at math. I walked away cakeless but still with my 5 yuan.

Today (Monday) I worked in the technical center of the factory dealing with the paper pattern. The workers take measurements of the clothes, map them onto a computer, which then uses a machine to draw the shapes of the individual pieces onto paper. They printed out a t-shirt pattern for me and I had to cut out the shapes of the t-shirt (front, back, and sleeves). After cutting them out I put the paper onto cloth to trace onto the cloth. Finally after tracing onto the cloth I had to cut out the shapes of the clothing. This was by far the most tedious job I've had so far. The work went slowly and I had to be very precise. Whatever they use to draw onto the cloth with is really hard because you can't make clean lines, the cloth is always pulling up.