In case you're wondering what Americans can eat in China, here's a rundown of our normal meals:

hamburgers, french fries and baked beans
spaghetti, sauce and meat balls
chicken nuggets and green beans
baked fish, broccoli and rice
Fillippino pork stew (menudo) and rice
Ham, mashed potatoes, beans and salad
pork chops
pizza, pizza, pizza
salad (usually only at restaurants, it's hard to find salad in the store)

There is a wonderful butcher shop nearby where we get all the normal meats we're used to, and with the import stores and wonderfully fresh produce at the corner shop, we can eat fairly similarly to the way we used to. It's pretty cool, because everything is pretty fresh as far as meat and produce goes. We had eggs and toast tonight (the corner shop DOES refrigerate their eggs, probably thanks to the heavy expat population here, yay).

There are some pretty cool perks that come along with living here, too, besides the obvious one of domestic help. Because the only kids' channel we could get was Cartoon Network, and now we can't even get that, the kids just don't watch tv or want to. They play together inside sometimes and outside as often as they can, riding scooters and bikes or drawing with chalk or playing at the playground. It's amazing to watch them fill up their time with good, old-fashioned activities that involve moving your body! We spend more time together as a family, which I had been told ahead of time by dear friends would happen, and we're enjoying each others' company much more.

Everybody delivers, even McDonald's and Subway, though we don't frequent those places often at all. The other restaurants deliver, and nobody expects a tip. Cool! They ride up here on bikes with our food, piping hot and ready to eat. I don't know how they keep the soup that hot for that long. I also found out that STARBUCK'S DELIVERS. Whoooppee! Even though, as I previously mentioned, they don't carry their fantastic cream cheese danishes, pumpkin muffins or strawberries and cream frappuccino. Somebody out there (Marlena?), please have one for me and think about me because I miss those!

So, while we can get Chinese food if we wanted to (and just about any other nationality of food!), and the kids COULD watch Chinese TV, they and we don't. There are some pretty neat things about living in China I hadn't even thought of ahead of time.