Things you don't see everyday (but we do!)

Want to keep strangers from scaling your wall? Short on cash for barbed wire? Into repurposing stuff? Why not cement your old, broken beer bottles to the top of your wall? I don't think I'd try to climb over this one! We actually saw this type of home-defense in Mexico too, but are still in awe of it...just how did they mount all that broken glass without chopping off a few fingers? Or maybe they did and it was worth it!
One Sunday Gene, Amanda and I went for a walk (in search of food) in the neighborhood of our church while Liz was in her youth group meeting. After finding a local grocery store and purchasing some packaged snacks, we took a self-guided tour of a traditional residential area and took in the sites. We didn't have time to play a round (match? game?) of pool, but were interested in this outdoor pool hall. Notice the after-thought of wooden steps in the front. Wonder what this building was originally intended for, showing plays, perhaps?
We have taken to riding the bus to church (and many other locations, actually) as this is easier than trying to communicate with taxi drivers, is much cheaper (more cash for buying trinkets to take home to our friends and family!), allows us to see the city sites for future reference, provides entertainment for the other bus riders and offers interesting conversation starters. Take, for instance, this lady driver's unique way of extending her reach for the gas pedal...that green thing is a chunk of sidewalk. She rested her high-heel clad feet on it when it was time to accelerate. No wonder the sidewalks around here can be treacherous, we have lots of busses on the roads!
Another installment of local vehicles...above are two handy delivery/collection bikes. The olive drab color always makes me think of old war relics but I think these are actually fairly new. Might be handy for my trips to the farmer's market back home...
Local street cleaner. We have been pleased to find that Xiamen is quite a clean city as far as sidewalks and streets go. I see these little street-sweeping carts often on the side roads and the main sidewalks and parks are always full of people dressed in yellow long-sleeved jackets and long blue pants sweeping the stray leaves with big brooms made from tree branches. They are followed closely by guys driving carts like the one below, so he can collect the debris. (Now if we could only get the locals to quit spitting great gobs of gunk all over the place and teach the little children to go potty in less public spaces, we'd be even better off!)
Garbage and recycling collection...this guy lost half his load in the street. Can't imagine why, perhaps because it was so overloaded?! There are large garbage trucks too, but these small collection bikes seem to be more common. In fact, we don't have dumpsters at our apartment complex, just small garbage barrels (less than half the size of our weekly pick-up container at home, and we have the smallest that is available) around our courtyard for everyone to use. There are a few ladies who empty them constantly and also sift through the stuff for recyclables
that they take to the corner hole-in-the-wall. This system seems to work pretty well and we don't have to look at piles of garbage around our place. Hope you like these interesting sites, we have become immune to them already, but are trying to keep fresh eyes so we can share them all with you!