Underground Market

This is the underground market in Old City. I was there at the import store buying butter and ketchup. But you can buy a whole lot more...

Me and some friends found out that the KFC in Old City was serving an American breakfast. So of course we wanted to try it! We headed out after our run to see for ourselves what was "American" about it.

Almost nothing.

The menu:
Chinese porridge
Fried bread in baguette form
Hash brown sticks (American)
Egg and tomato with shrimp wrapped with a tortilla (a mixture between Chinese and Mexican)
Fried egg, AMERICAN cheese slice, 4 T of mayonnaise all on a hamburger bun (this was the most American thing there)
Oh and coffee that was actually milk tea.

It wasn't that bad actually. You take the mayo off the egg sandwich and it was pretty tasty although extremely small. We won't make the trip again, but hey, at least we tried it!

Chinese Dog

Erin, April and I went to dinner tonight at our "corner restaurant" to order dishes. We got some potatoes with beef, garlic greens with doufu, a beef soup of some sort and lamb sticks (like kebabs). And of course, the normal Jasmine tea that's served.

When you order sticks you get two chunks of lamb seasoned and put on a stick with a big chunk of fat put in between them and then they're grilled to perfection. We do not eat the fat. We get enough fat in the oil that all the food is swimming in.

(We are sitting outside and eating as the sun is setting over the mountains.)

After we finished eating we were talking while letting our food digest. And we see this little dog running around, obviously looking for scraps of some sort. Well...since we don't eat the fat on those sticks, we thoughts we'd give him some.

We try calling him over...yell "here doggy, doggy", whistle, make clicking noises with our tongues, and I even tried doing the Chinese grunt noise that they do to each other. Nothing was working. That dog would not come over to us.

We thought maybe he was intimidated because we're foreigners. And...he doesn't understand English-only Chinese. So we started yelling "Dog" in Chinese. Still didn't work. He wouldn't come. But we did manage to get the rest of the customers involved. They all started whistling and calling for the dog for us, all the while, laughing with us at the humor in it all.

My language tutor, Tina, came over and brought her friend, Christina. I wanted to learn how to make Chinese food and she loved the idea of teaching me. We met and went to the market to buy all the necessary items. And I found out that I am being charged way more than the Chinese typically get charged. But hey, that's life, right? We laughed as we walked through the market saying hello to the vendors that I go to regularly while forgetting the food that we just bought. Tina and I get so busy talking that we aren't thinking some of the time:) We met Christina back at my house and started the process. Cleaned everything, chopped it all and started the stir-frying.

I learned that the secret to good Chinese food is the oil and the salt. And my goodness is there a lot of salt! I watched Tina pour spoon after spoon after spoon of salt into each dish! I was amazed! No wonder I'm always so thirsty here:) But it sure was delicious.

Menu:
Xihongshi chao jidan-Fried egg and tomato
Niurou, qiezi-Beef and eggplant (although we made it with lamb mistakingly)
Liangcai-cold dish of doufupi (tofu noodles), hadai (don't have in US), green peppers
*All of it with soy sauce, dark vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, chili peppers, etc.

We laughed all through dinner and managed to eat over bit of it. Tina and Christina are both Hui and it's their thought that you shouldn't waste anything you've made, even if you're stuffed! So the last 9 or 10 grains of rice I had in my bowl, Tina made me eat them. :)

And I had made lemon bars for them to try, not thinking they would like them. I had been told that Chinese don't like lemon things. Well, they do! They ate them all and took some home! I had three bars left over from the whole pan!

Lady Penelope

Me and some friends after a murder-mystery party we had! Don't worry, I wasn't the murderer, but I was British for the night-Lady Penelope!

Easter

Me and some friends enjoying our Easter lunch. Notice all of our fun spring colors. We didn't plan it! It was so nice to come together on that special day and have some traditional Easter food! I made homemade macaroni and cheese made with Easter pasta my Aunt Teresa and Pop-Pop sent me. And I made deviled eggs! The Australians that were there eating with us hadn't ever had a deviled egg or homemade macaroni and cheese. It proves my theory correct: southern food is the best! :)

Funeral

I was headed down to Old-City this morning with some friends when we passed a large truck filled with flowers and behind it was a vehicle carrying about four men, one of them playing a solemn tune on a trumpet out the window. We asked the driver what was going on and he told us it was a funeral. As we looked on we realized it was a child's funeral. The child lay in the bed of the truck covered in flowers and candles and with him was his bicycle and some of his toys. And those people in the vehicle behind was his family members expressing their sorry through the tune of this trumpet. It was so sad to see, and so interesting at the same time, to see their cultural way of mourning the loss of someone.

Your eyes...

Yesterday evening I was standing in the hall talking to one of my classmates, a girl from France named Carolyn. She had brought me a cupcake she'd made and we were just chatting. Three of the girls from Kyrgyzstan walked by and said hello. (They live across the hall from me.) As I was walking back into my apartment to put the cake away before going to dinner they stopped me. Rosalina says, "Kathryn, your eyes drive me crazy!" I'm sorry, what?!?! I was so confused! She says it again with more expression this time! I said, "Are you joking?" They all assure me they're not with nods and so forth. They ask me if my eyes are green, which they are and I confirm that with them. And again, "Your eyes drive me crazy!" I laughed and said thank you. The four of us had a good laugh about it actually.

I've been laughing about it ever since. In their way they were trying to show me a genuine complement in a language that's not their first, not even their second. :) It still makes me laugh out loud :)

It got lost!

After class today we all walked outside to see that one of the student's bikes was stolen/lost. Yes, sad news. But not out of the question. That is the most common crime here. But...but...here's a look into the Chinese culture. Because this is a shaming culture and they don't want anyone to lose face you wouldn't tell your friend that someone stole your bike. You would tell them that you lost your bike. You lost your wallet, you lost your car, etc. You get the point. It's very inappropriate to tell someone that someone else stole something of yours even if the person who stole it is a complete stranger. For big items, they know what you mean. For things like keys, wallet, etc. I'm not exactly sure what they're thinking when you tell them you lost it because you really could lose those things. But I don't foresee myself losing my car unless I've been in Wal-Mart too long and can't remember where I've parked it. :) But that doesn't happen here.

So yes, the girl today, she lost her bike. :(

Watchin' Out for Me

Each time I buy fruit I try and go to the same fruit stand. It's right across from the supermarket and near all of my favorite restaurants. A couple in their 50's runs it. For the longest time I only saw the man, but in the last couple of months his wife has been helping him. Since my Chinese is improving I can actually talk with them.

Wednesday I rode my bike up there to buy some apples. (These have become my favorite snack!) The wife was working that day. I opted not to carry a purse and since it was so warm I didn't have a jacket on either. I had my keys and wallet attached together and both of those were attached to my bike lock that were all sitting in my basket on the front of my bike.

When the lady saw that my wallet was just sitting in the basket she got all excited. How could I leave my wallet in the basket for someone to take it? She took it out and told me how I needed to put it inside my clothes so no one could see it. (That day I was wearing a puffy vest over a long-sleeved shirt.) She started to search me all over for pockets to put my wallet in. I didn't have any. I assured her that I knew she was right and I would have pockets or a purse tomorrow and that I wouldn't do this again. She continued to look for a pocket and unzipped my vest still looking for pockets.

She found one! I didn't even know it was there! A little pocket on the inside of my vest. She tried desperately to stuff this wallet and my keys into the pocket. I thought she was going to break it. I just smiled and laughed the whole time. She finally got it all in and started patting me, indicating that all is well now. I thanked her for helping me and taking care of me in this way. She seemed so pleased. She even threw in a few cherry tomatoes as a nice gesture:)

I think I have a new friend:)

You have money

This afternoon I was coming back from Old City and I was in a taxi. I was opening up a package that my wonderful parents sent me. There were some 3 Muskateers in it. I wanted to share a little bit with the nice taxi driver so I handed him one and told him that it was chocolate from America. He said thank you. And then told me that since I'm an American I have lots of money. I chuckled and said that no I didn't because I'm student. He chuckled back and said again that I had a lot of money because I was an American. All Chinese (and Asians really) think that all Americans are wealthy. We all know that's not true don't we? :)

Language

I'm finally seeing drastic improvement in my language. Ma Laoshi even complimented it the other day. This means a lot because she normally tells me how I need to work on it and it needs improvement. I'm starting to carry on conversations with the fruit stand couple that I go to see every few days and I'm talking in Chinese over meals with my Chinese friends, instead of speaking in English. I even have to laugh because when I'm speaking English with an American I find myself wanting to throw in Chinese words instead of English ones. It's all so interesting how different languages have wonderful ways to express feelings or thoughts that other languages don't have. There are some great sayings or words in Chinese that we don't have in English. We would have to give a whole paragraph just to express what one word can in Chinese. Hence the reason I like to throw those Chinese words in there sometimes:)

And thank goodness it's spring. Today it's a high of 81 degrees! I'm no longer running in multiple layers! Yea! And the grass is no longer completely brown. It's turning green! That doesn't mean we can walk in it or sit on it. But it's candy for the eyes!

Two comments in one day!

So yesterday in class we were studying our Chinese characters. We were studying "Ri" and "Ben" and combined they make "Riben" which means Japan. We were chatting about that with our teacher and she just blurts out how she doesn't like Japanese people. It all goes back to something in history that the Japanese did to the Chinese and well, a lot of Chinese haven't forgiven them for it. So she just tells us this as if she's telling us what she ate for breakfast that morning. It was so strange and we all (me and my three classmates) just sat there stunned and shocked that she would actually say that out loud to us.

On a different subject...China as a country and all Chinese people absolutely love fireworks. They prefer the loud ones to the colorful ones. It's entertainment for their ears not their eyes! And if there's ANY excuse to shoot them off they will find it and use it. But you will never know to what the extent is that they love these fireworks until you've been here in person.

But this same day that the first paragraph happened is when my other teacher (our favorite one) just randomly says "Fireworks best invention ever is fireworks!" And he's standing there grinning from ear-to-ear. You would have thought we just shot some off and he was seeing them for the first time. It was so adorable and at the same time, absolutely hilarious!