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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Haggling for coconuts

Tonight my Chinese/English study partner drove me around town on his electric bike making me speak Chinese to random fruit vendors. Such good practice!

We stopped and I haggled for a coconut, bought the coconut, and then drove around to 4 or 5 more fruit vendors haggling for coconuts but not buying any. It cracks me up that the vendors get so confused...they hear me ask in Chinese "How much does the coconut cost?" and they look at me funny because I'm holding a coconut, and they say in Chinese, "But you already have a coconut" instead of telling me the price. This happened several times. Well, why can't I buy more than one coconut??

Sidenote, it's also very scary how quickly they chop the outer shell off the coconuts in order to chop it down to size so they can poke a straw in it for you. I was very nervous watching the woman seemingly almost hack all of the fingers off her left hand. Yikes.

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