Culture Shock

There is nothing like a night on the town to make you feel fat and incompetent. I have been very blessed to have only a few instances of culture shock in my eight months here, but sometimes it's just the normal things that trigger it. Tonight I went to my favorite part of town to try to buy a new outfit for my birthday. I have done a lot of window shopping, but I seldom try on clothing just because I find it a bit mafan (troublesome). In America I like to take several things into the dressing room at one time and then try them on, but it seems that that is not customary here. The dressing room's are very small, there are no hangers, and the mirror is on the outside of the door. Bu Fangbian (not convenient)! To try to make a long story short, I was having trouble finding capris that fit right. In the first store a 27 was a little too small and they didn't have them any larger. The next store they still didn't have any larger than a 27. The next store I went in to had a pair of 28 that I actually liked, but I wanted to make sure I was getting the best deal so I went to one more place. This is where the culture shock really began. It is trivial really, but when you can't fit into the largest size that they have and you can only understand half of what someone is saying, it really makes a familiar and ordinarily fun activity seem very foreign.
So, after buying shirt (those actually fit) I went back to the place that actually had big enough pants and proceeded to do the normal thing of asking for a discount. They gave me a 10% discount, but when I tried to get them to drop the price a little more to make for an even number, I got an aggressive lecture in a language that I really couldn't understand. I wasn't trying to offend her, I was just trying not to be cheated because I am a foreigner. After we agreed to the price the lady kept talking to me and for some reason I couldn't understand a word she was saying so I started to tear up. Riding in the bus on the way home I saw something that topped it all off. On the side of the road and man was kicking his son. He had apparently kicked all he wanted to so the father and son started walking while the little boy cried. Then the father started violently slapping the boy with both hands. This time I did start to cry. Things like that go on in America but in the privacy of people's homes. Though people seldom do it so publicly, I hear that child abuse is normal and accepted here and that breaks my heart. I wanted to jump off the bus and tell the father to stop, so it was probably a good thing that we drove out of sight.