DAY 3 - Rope, Ropes & more Ropes!

Today started out as a rather relaxing day. Or so it seemed. It was our day for R&R. The Youth Communist Party was taking our team of volunteers out to visit their Botanical Garden. As for myself, I was planning to run some errands. I wanted to hunt for 8 – 10 mm cotton rope for my Magic II class. Sheesh… You would think that I’d be able to purchase it in Singapore right? Well, you can’t. I can only find nylon rope in Singapore and it wasn’t cheap either. Nowadays, it seems as though everything is made in China. So might as well try to find it since I’m here.

We went to many places but to no avail. I was sure that in such a big place like Shenyang, they were bound to have what I was looking for. We just had to find the right place. Finally! After searching the whole morning, some one pointed us to the right direction. Where we went, I do not have a clue. It looked like a small street behind a wholesale district, with many little shophouses. Oh well!

Yea!! They do have the rope which I was looking for. But oh my goodness! It was such a mess. They chucked a huge messy bundle of rope on the ground and told me - This is 150meters. For people who sell rope, they sure don’t know how to handle rope. It took them 30 minutes to try to recoil the rope, just to end up more tangled than when they started. Look at the mess they were making. I had no choice but to step in and lend a hand.

Initially, I was quite amused at the situation. It got old pretty quickly and the smile on my face soon dissapeared. By the time we were done, it was already close to 4pm. We spent the whole day searching for ropes. All I wanted to do was to enjoy what was left of one and only R&R day.