OK, I am still a bit enamored by the "little" things of convenience in my mother land. 

 Case in point: A week ago I bought a little car-adapter for our I-Pod so that we can play our music while traveling around.  But the AM/FM digital adapter thing didn't work very well.  The static was terrible and then one day it just didn't work at all.  So I grabbed my receipt and returned to Radio Shack with the adapter.

Within 5 minutes I had a full refund (cash in hand even) with hardly any questions asked.  I didn't even have the original packaging.

Whoah.  Intense.

Contrast this with a story my expat friend told me about purchasing a portable DVD player in Xining.  Basically he bought a portable DVD player from an electronics store only to discover that the battery was dead when he bought it.  After haggling with the retailer, my friend got a different machine which unfortunately had the same problem.  Because the retailer guaranteed a full refund if the customer was not "completely satisfied" my friend asked for his money back.  The clerk tried many ways to avoid giving my friend his money.  "Oh, I'm sorry.  The person who gives refunds isn't here today.  Oh, I'm sorry the refund agents are at lunch right now."  My friend, cleverly, decided to just wait in the store for his money.  Call it a sit-in.  Eventually, after much arguing and perseverance he was given a full refund!  It was a process that took quite a lot of time and trouble and most of us expats still can't believe he actually got his money back.  If his Chinese wasn't so good, I'm still not convinced it would have worked.  Things are a lot different in China.

Technology has also changed a bit in the last 3 years.  The little things that is.  We recently got cable in our home because we were desperate for English-speaking news, kids' shows, and Major League Baseball (well, I was desperate for baseball–Christa couldn't care less.)  Well, "basic" cable has changed a lot from the last time we had it.  Now you get a bazillion channels and FREE On-Demand.  What?  With the internet package we also got, the price wasn't drastically different from when we had cable/internet in the past.

And speaking of kids shows, I guess some smart TV exec felt my frustration vibe about Dora the Explorer being a Spanish speaker.   "Why can't she speak Chinese?" was my daily lament as my girls were glued to Dora, Boots, and Swiper's every move.  Well, there is a NEW Nick Jr show in town called, Ni Hao, Kai-Lan and it is a cartoon that teaches kids Chinese.  Sweet.  I may watch it so that I don't lose all my elementary-level Chinese while we are in America the next 9 months.

You just gotta love this country…