I've Made It

This one is for all you ladies who love shoes, who look at designer shoes like a child looks at Santa, but can’t afford or can’t imagine spending $800 on a pair of shoes.  This is for all the girls who use a hot pair of heals to make a simple t-shirt and jeans look like a million bucks…
Well my job here as an ex-pat wife has been the most challenging task of my life.  I have to keep my American girl independence and my American girl expectations of a marriage with Chinese materials without insulting the Chinese culture.  The biggest challenges lead to the biggest rewards!  My biggest reward is becoming so much closer to my wonderful husband…but beyond that I have embraced the simple life.  I love that my refrigerator can only hold things we will actually use (as opposed to my pantry and fridge at home which had plenty of room for any sauce, condiment or fun sounding treat I saw at the store).  I love that when thinking about baby stuff I have decided to be a minimalist mom (looking online at babies-r-us makes me wonder how any little baby can actually “need” all that stuff).  Another benefit is the cheap things we can get here (fruits and veggies, DVD’s, airplane tickets).  One thing I have heard about but hadn’t seen is the copy designer shoes.  I have seen the bad copy’s and honestly they are fine (but are cheaply made and don’t give your feet proper support).
Yesterday at LoHu everything changed!  I just went to keep a friend company and to pick up something from the tailor.  I have come to find that I get the best deals when I don’t actually need anything.  Jodie and I stopped at a shoe store and I was asking to see if they made tennis shoes in Adam’s size.  The girl said they didn’t have anything here but she could take me to her other shop right next door.  Jodie was working on a deal so I went with the girl…we went to a bedding store, I was very confused…especially when she lead me to the closet.  Well this closet wasn’t a closet at all but a secret store with the high quality copy bags and shoes!!!!  No were in sight were there men’s tennis shoes but I didn’t care I was in shoe heaven!  I saw Jimmy Choo, Tods, Chanel, and the list goes on…  I tried on a pair of amazing Jimmy Choo’s and a pair of strappy Burberrys’.  The girl went to get Jodie who insisted that I obviously wasn’t in the bedding store and refused to come in (these are little 9x9 shops and she could see I wasn’t there) so I went to get her and she was as amazed as I was.  The girl quoted me a price of 1700 RMB ($250) for both pairs…since I don’t actually need shoes and I didn’t intend to come home with anything I aimed low in the bargaining and got both pairs of shoes for what I would pay for decent off season shoes on sale at Belk.  Not only that, but I now have the business card to get me to the girl with the shoes!