sometimes we just attract attention

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Patt and I now have a Chinese phrase book, borrowed from Matt and Laura, and given a phrase book, I become one of your basic bi-lingual (or try-lingual ) people.  -- Patt is getting good too.  One of our newest advantages is that Julianna is teaching and helping us with pronunciation.  She is also stepping in when we are struggling- see second photo below-

Well Patt and I took the kids to the grocery store and armed with "yo mei you"  and a dictionary we could find out if the store had most anything on our list.  Finding helpers to help understand me and find something and look at the kids was not hard.  It was a slow day at the store and the multiple helpers where busy helping me/us -- it was becoming comic.  (this particular store has helpers like old time department stores did in the US.

Patt left me and my linguistic ability working through the particular knotty problem of finding honey (the word was not in the dictionary and my imitation of a bee did not help the clerks/helpers understand what we wanted at all.   Patt had gone to find one of the few items which we knew beforehand where it was.  She returned and saw me surrounded.  Did she offer to help, no she asked for the camera.  

Later Patt was recounting to Julianna why she had brought one kind of a drink instead of the preferred when Patt responded that the shelf was being restocked and she could not see the entire selection.  Julianna then said "  Grandmama, you should have said  "___ ____ ____ ____ ___ _ ___ "  (the dashes stand for Chinese).  Patt then said well how would that have helped.  Julianna said, it means "move, I need to find the mango drink"  Julianna is getting to be quite the helper.

yo mei you" -- with proper pronunciation means "Do you have "_____?