37 Hours without Sleep - GLORY

Just coming off of the aftereffects of pulling an all nighter 2 days ago. Or however the defining of 'days' comes after pulling an all nighter, I basically suffered yesterday waiting for the sweet embrace of 7pm sleep.

We opted to attempt the all nighter in the face of what seemed to be an insurmountable wall of homework. Our plan was homework, then gym, then homework, then sleep at 3 if we can get done. If we were not asleep by 3, we were gonna bust out the movies, buy some late night snacks from the market, and dig in for the long haul.

The gym was what altered the course of the plan. It was our second time going for the day, and our gym itinerary wasn't the normal "I will work this body part for this many sets, going for this goal and this result," but rather the popular Trunks-style, "I will lift as much weight as I can and make lots of noise to get myself psyched up and have fun." To aid us in this plan, we took our pre-workout drinks like we would for a normal workout, and that is when things went terribly wrong. We are not sure if it was the caffeine late at night, or the fact that it was our second time taking it, or because God decided we needed to show the Chinese the meaning of crazy Americans running wild, but we went insane. I remember distinctly running from our dorm to the back gate to get a cab because running just seemed so NECESSARY. On the way we saw a group of our teachers walking after a peaceful dinner, which caused us to take turns yelling 健身房！ and "SPARTANS! WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION? HOO HOO HOO!" They were frightened.

At the gym we saw the program director, who was happy to see us if a bit confused as to why we were at the gym at 10pm right before it closed. We proceeded to do gratuitous amounts of bench press, and I'm pretty sure I set new world records for looking like a meat head. JJ and I were yelling at each other in English, Chinese, and I think some caffeine fueled mix language that no one but us understood. It was fantastic.

After we got back we were riding the gym high and the caffeine and we just refused to stand still. JJ and I decided this is what it must feel like to use the dark side of the force. We realized that we needed to use our new force powers, which caused JJ for some reason to move all the plants around, then caused a handstand pushup contest, followed by running to the balcony on the fifth floor for mop fights.



At some point we also found a dry erase marker and wrote "I am man!" and a Chinese equivalent of it on the board in the community study room about 50 times each. After declaring our manhood, we finished our homework and began the long road of recovery that ended this morning when I woke up.

On an unrelated note, I found some awesome Chinese music from my roommate. It is Iron Maiden in every way except for the words, which are not English but Chinese. In addition to that, I now have a Chinese cookbook written in Chinese with some of my favorite dishes, a fantastically biased map of China, several children's versions of popular Chinese stories, and the 56 episode 红楼梦 Dream of the Red Chamber. The Dream of the Red Chamber is tied as the most popular story in China, it is one of those novels that has its own college courses and people that dress up as characters from it on certain days of the year. The Chinese cookbook looks promising, too, I've already made one dish out of it yesterday. The only daunting part is buying the ingredients, some of the things you see in these markets are frightening beyond words. There are an abundance amount of cute and possibly disease ridden birds, I want to buy one but I don't want to die of Avian flu.

Gold For America

The game just ended, and America dominated. Tonight we had a Chinese students versus America full court basketball game on an inside court with a nice little crowd. For awhile it was 5 Americans and about 8 Chinese guys, so they had plenty of chances to substitute and it stayed tied into 20's at half time (or 40, we were playing by 1's). Finally a little after halftime 2 more Americans showed up, and with the infusion of non tired people and someone decent to draw double teams of JJ and me America pulled away and never looked back. 58 - 40, the final score here from Hangzhou. Back to you in the studios Chris.

In other news, lately Chris and JJ have been living like rich Chinese people (or poor Americans). Last night we went to the gym, followed by KFC, followed by massages. It was a very good set of events. Today we found a mall near the Chinese Hooters we went to a week ago. I don't know if I wrote about it and I'm too lazy to check so I'm gonna do a quick recap (or introduction) on it real quick. The food was great, the girls were not attractive, I bought a shirt, but most importantly, they asked us if it was our first time because they had a surprise. What followed was an extremely disturbing rendition of "you are my sunshine" sung by all the Hooter's girls complete with a weird, kindergarten level dance. I do not want to go back. In any case, the mall had a fantastic bakery, a Papa John's we will go to later this week, and a host of other stores to just waste time browsing for things we'll never buy, namely the picture below. THEY ARE PANTS WITH BUILT IN BOXER TOPS TO LOOK LIKE YOU ARE SAGGING. I need to buy them and then sag them. "Yeah these are my boxers, these are my fake boxers, these are my pants. So hood."



Tommorrow I am going to the bookstore to buy a cookbook, Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber in Chinese to read again and see how much I understand, and a high school level history book to see what they learn.

The 后门 has the best food

Today I saw a guy on the street with a bucket full cleaned and unfeathered of goose heads. Like a big bucket. I didn't know why he had them, and I'm not sure he quite knew why either.

Busy Week

Rui'an is possibly the most beautiful place in the entire world, and is most definitely the most breathtaking place in China. It was well worth the 6 hour ride on the bus there and back - we watched Drunken Master 2 twice. And yes, it was awesome.

The hiking in Rui'an was tiresome, there weren't formal stairs or tourist friendly paths. They were slippery stones and almost no railings anywhere - there were quite a few falls and injuries on the way climbing back down. There was a potential for a typhoon to hit land near us, which meant that no one else had come to the area we were climbing that day. This also meant that the wind was blowing just enough to make it very comfortable instead of skin melting Hangzhou hot. They told us not to swim, but when our 5 man MAN GROUP climbed up all the way to the 9th pool we had to get in. As the other students arrived they opted to join us, and then the teachers did as well. It was ridiculously fun and overwhelmingly beautiful, trees and waterfalls like I've never seen before. It was as if all those Asian nature paintings that look too pretty to be real had come to life.

The performances in Rui'an went well. I played all the different "Chinese person" roles in our skit, ranging from teacher to random people on the street to dressing in drag to play a girl. The latter was the most popular, and somehow we were the only ones to put together that putting a 200 pound guy in girls clothing is hilarious. I got the best actor award for the night, and as my prize won a very fitting pink clock.

In our four person group, Dan and Andy did most of the writing and joke crafting and then Ron and I did all of the embarrassing parts and complex speaking. It was very convenient having Ron and I (two of the best if not the best two speakers in the program) together, we could actually have witty conversations and make jokes aside from dressing up like a lady. Though there were many parts that everyone loved, I think the part of the skit I most enjoyed was the ending Dan decided to add during the writing process. Essentially it involves me tearing open my shirt and mimicking the "THIS IS SPARTA" to yell "THIS IS CHINAAAA" and kicking him in the chest. All the Americans got it, half he roommates got it, and few of the teachers understood. They all yelled and clapped, and as we bowed the roared for more it was fantastic. The roommates explained to each other why I had just torn my 衣服 and kicked a student in the Chest, and the teachers all talked amongst themselves and tried to figure out why all of the other Americans were so happy. Needless to say, last night we all watched 300 together last night to educate them.

I found a 'hamburger' here in China. There is a red and white sauce of unknown origins, the meat seems to be lamb, and there is for some reason an egg involved. It is tasty, but it is no hamburger. I think tomorrow we are going to KFC to get JJ and Bob some comfort food, I am very excited.

I have, of course, made friends with the entire gym staff. I go there 2 hours a day, it is to be expected. Apparently I was described as very approachable and easygoing, easy to talk to. Bob is described as nearly the same, but apparently JJ's long hair and demeanor makes him look fierce and some other great adjectives that mean something along the lines of unapproachable. In any case, yesterday one of the trainers beckoned me into the office in the center of the gym. When I say office, I mean more of like a raised pedestal with waist high walls, I don't really understand it. I didn't really understand why he wanted me up there at first, then he pulled out the measuring tape. The other trainers watched as he measured my arms, which to me was very weird. I measured in at 42cm, or 17 and a half inches, which I think is pretty monstrously awesome. I told the head teacher about it, and she said they are sizing me up for an advertisement. Apparently a student last year and the year before were both chosen for different advertisements, one was picked up at a bar and the other oddly enough at a gym. She thinks they probably want me to be in an advertisement for the gym, and that if this is the case they would pay well. I don't really care about money though, I care more about my dangerously inflated ego.

And last but not least, before showing you the pictures and video, I will let you know that I finally road on my first 3 wheeled motorbike taxi with JJ in the back with me, and we raced against Bob and his roommate through the streets of China. It was dangerous. It was awesome.

There Are No Words

Only Images. Making this only half a Dream Theater album. It is still a precursor though, without a doubt.

Now that the Dan-Chris inside jokes are over, I shall share with you two glorious pictures and a movie. After that I will pack for our weekend trip to Rui'an and prepare for the performance we must give while there.


This was found at the China Pizza Hut. It is the World Conquerer Pizza, winner of the 'best name on the menu' contest we had. There are other good monarchs of cuisine, but this one is the greatest. We ordered it. It did, indeed, conquer our taste buds.



This is beyond words. This may be the greatest word I've seen translated into English in a weird way in the history of forever. I am sending this one to engrish.com

And finally, there is this video. The entire staff of a haircut place outside, with music, doing a choreographed dance for I am assuming either attracting business or attracting mates. Enjoy.

Randoms Things I've Noticed in China

People in the gym locker room attempt to congregate nonchalantly whenever I change clothes. They are not nonchalant. Nonchalant means not staring at my penis and following me when I go to shower.

This country has way too much bread, I have inordinately large amounts of bread at every meal. All of those anti-carbohydrate doctors would go into shock if they saw the percentage of my diet that is carbohydrates.

Yesterday a naked man in the locker room was staring at his package in the middle of the locker room. He answered a phone call, talked, hung up, then went back to the middle of the locker room and resumed staring at himself. I'm not sure what he was looking for or expecting.

Asking for a scoop in the lunch line typically means I get 2 or 3 enthusiastic scoops as they attempt to cover my tray with generosity disguised as rice.

Chocolate preserves sanity.

Apparently, for JJ, anything but chocolate causes 拉肚子。

Clothes dry faster when hung outside in the 100 degree plus weather than when placed inside the suspiciously untrustworthy dryers.

Anything can be tied to a bike or motorcycle for transport. Boxes, printers, refrigerators. On that topic, green means go. Red means go. There is no yellow.

My English is getting progressively worse, but more worrisome is that not enough things in China phase me anymore. I think I am going to start carrying around a notebook to write things I notice, because I have about 15 "This is China" moments every day, but I forget them quickly since they happen so frequently. "This is China" is often abbreviated to TIC, and it is a term I got last year while studying abroad from two other UT students. Due to the language pledge, we jokingly converted it into 这是中国 (zhe shi zhongguo), and we like to say zh- sh- zh- as the acronym while on the streets. I would say that every bus ride to or from the gym has a zh-sh-zh moment. These include weird sightings of both good and bad nature, and all in all I think the zh-sh-zh moments are part of why I love this country.

zh-sh-zh

好久不见

I just got on and noticed that in my e-mail inbox I have a message that is about 3 or 4 days old. The message states that the most likely cause of all the students getting diarrhea has been all of the back alley local restaurants, mainly the smaller ones that may not be properly keeping meat. I think all of the Americans in the program have or are just getting over the Chinese version of Montezuma's revenge, which is interesting to me since I have been suspiciously immune. Don't think it is because I am careful, from the inordinate amount of peppers, vinegar, and other potentially havoc wreaking food items I put into my body at every meal you'd think I was in a race with to get acid reflux by age 25. Additionally, I have definitely been eating at those small local restaurants at least once a day for the last week and I will definitely not stop just because a few white people can't handle their spicy foods. Damned white people.

On the topic of food, I finally found - in one of those local restaurants ironically enough - the green bean dish I've been searching forever for. After leaving Beijing I last year I began a 6 month quest to find it in America that did not have the success I hoped for, and up until 3 days ago all the attempts at finding the delicious 干扁四季豆 (ganbiansijidou - aka ganbiandoujiao 干扁豆角) have been for naught. I finally found it though, and I have subsequently eaten it every day for the past 3 days. The man who runs the restaurant is a Chinese version of my Uncle Bubba because of the manner in which he takes control and makes sure everything is hospitable and perfect. Each time I go to this restaurant (probably 5 times in all so far) I bring new people, and each time he goes out of his way to come over and takes over the ordering and paying process. The new people always struggle with figuring out the menu or ordering at the front, so he lumbers out of the kitchen, shoos away the kitchen, and breaks the whole process down. He finds out what you want, and by god he is going to make sure you get it. That is how I've gotten to eat the green bean dish I like, this chicken and pepper dish I like, and a host of other things that aren't on the menu. The food here is out of control happiness in a bowl.

Opted not to travel this weekend, instead we went for massages and movies. The massage was the equivalent of $10 US for 75 minutes, and instantly recharged me so that I could continue to dominate the gym like the American bear that I am. I think the exact quote Bob used to describe me was, "The guys at the gym like Chris because he is big like a bear, I swear I am putting on 30 more pounds of muscle before I come back to China next time." In any case, the more important part of those two m's was the movie. We originally went intending to see Hancock, but Hancock cost 4 times more than any of the other movies at the theater and for some reason at this theater had no English audio. Thus we opted to instead go and see Red Cliff (赤壁 chibi), a movie I didn't know much about outside of a bad quality preview my teacher excitedly showed us in Chinese class last year. It - was - awesome. It was as if Hero, the 300, and a train filled with halberd wielding bad asses had collided on screen. I did not know this (JJ and Bob did), but the movie was basically the plot line of a series of popular games called Dynasty Warriors released in the US. The general idea is that it is the time of the 3 Warring States period, and there are a bunch of heroes leading armies to battle each other. With the exclusion of Jet Li and Jackie Chan, who at this point are pretty much American movie stars, I think every major Chinese action movie star was in this movie. The two guys from House of Flying Daggers, the emperor from Hero, the Japanese/Korean/Chinese/? guy from Fearless (with the excellent scowl), and a whole set of others. Every time a new person was revealed - which happened to be about every 5 or 10 minutes - the entire crowd would erupt into ooh's aah's and "No way him too!"'s. It was overwhelming, I was like a child in a medieval war shop. Or whatever. I cannot stress how awesome this movie was, and I guarantee it will come to America in some form or another.

Oh dear, the gym crew just walked in. It is time to go destroy. As a note for Dan, yesterday we mixed NOXplode and Black Powder. Casualties were high.

Child Mob

The picture upload isn't working, so I can't show the evidence, but yesterday I experienced what it may be like to be annoyingly famous. The night before last our program director was scrambling around searching for 12 students to go to a nearby Middle/High School to participate in the school's research project. And since I'm telling this story I obviously opted to go.

The school is for children from ages 14-18, though most of them were near the younger side, and they were doing some sort of function that involved bringing foreigners in to ask them questions. This school is out of control nice. It was in a gated compound with buildings that one of the guys from California said were directly out of Beverly Hills. I had no idea that this place existed in the middle of Hangzhou. Our teacher explained to us that these kids had to be among the smartest in Hangzhou to get to this nice school, but that it was also a private school with no government help, that is they had lots of money to spend on courtyards.

Only 7 of us could go, so we had to split up on our own and each of us went to a different classroom. There were other foreign students our age from other study abroad programs, mainly students from Italy and Spain, but none of them spoke Chinese. To be honest, I think for some of them their English was barely better than the students they were meeting with. Thus when I walked in and introduced myself in Chinese I became an instant celebrity and overshadowed the British guy and 3 Italian girls already in my class room. That's right, America wins again.

After a bunch of games and some question answer time, the teachers gave the students free time to take pictures. As soon as she declared this the students formed a line to take pictures with me, and after about 5 minutes of pictures they scrambled to get pens and paper. They tore the paper into squares and had my autograph them in English and Chinese. It was ridiculous. The best part of it was the shirt they gave me. I got a shirt with the name of their camp. The other foreigners put it on, but I opted to lay mine on the table and have the kids sign it. They swarmed all over it and left all these fun English/Chinese mix messages and pictures.

Tonight is Karaoke night with the whole program. WOOO

So beautiful a flower. It more need your love.

The fourth was relatively uneventful. We went to the West Lake, which at night was hot, crowded, and uneventful. I need to go back during the day when there are more things to see/do. We stood around for awhile waiting for these fountains with lights and water to start their show, and I have to say I wasn't impressed.

All the Americans wanted to go to a bar, and all the Chinese roommates and I wanted to go find lots of food, so we first took the Americans to a bar, dropped them off there with a roommate, and then we went and found lots of meats on sticks. I am a big fan of the kabob style food, though on the way I almost went and tried the Medival themed McDonald's. Check this thing out:
We got some more tea that night. It definitely wasn't anywhere near as tasty or weird as the tea I got on Thursday with the raw egg in it, but I guess that means it was also safer.

In any case, we went to bed relatively early on the night of the fourth since we wanted to leave early the next morning. JJ and Bob left for their destinations before us, but we ran into them at the bus station.
I think JJ is trying to build a house out of pens, or maybe just hammer that pen into the table. Whatever the case, things got very boring waiting for our respective buses to arrive. We eventually engaged in some arm wrestling competitions, doing our best to further any stereotypes the people around us had about Americans being competitive and/or violent. Oh yeah, we are those guys. Since we can't sing English, we are 'those guys' that sing the guitar riff of Back in Black or the Rocky theme song as we walk into the gym. Bus stops are no exception. JJ came to a draw with one guy's roommate, and I demolished my roommate in such a convincing way that no one else would arm wrestle me. I guess that makes me that champion of Chinese Bus Stop Arm Wrestling?

We eventually got to Qiandaohu, I won't go into the length of the bus ride or any of that nonsense. The only thing worth mentioning is the fun process of getting a hotel. I would hide around the corner while my roommate went in to bargain. All the hotels write 500 yuan for a single room, but even if you are a foreigner you are expected to bargain and get it down to at least 300. I would hide because it would invariably be at least 100 yuan cheaper if they didn't know I was staying there, too.

I found heads of garlic in the store that I chose to buy for a snack. They were preserved in some type of vinegar to add taste and make them easy to peel. They were not good.

We couldn't do anything that afternoon since we got there too late to get on the last boat heading out, so we basically sat in our room eating KFC and watching the Chinese State Sponsored version of animal planet, namely a long program about dinosaurs. It - was -awesome. Probably the best part of the trip. We sat there teaching each other the names of the dinosaurs that came on screen in our respective language, and I'm pretty sure that KFC was the best thing I've ever tasted in my entire life. I guess you can say that in a culinary sense I very much miss home sometimes.

The next day was long, hot, and not rewarding. The Qiandaohu lake is advertised as some of the cleanest, prettiest water in all of China. The Nongfu Springs water and other famous companies all bottle their water here. The water, however, was anything but clean and pretty. I attached the pictures that didn't have pollution, but you can still see some of it in the monkey statue picture. The water was just full of trash. The tour guide said it was because it rained recently and lots of trash somehow got washed into the lake, but this was out of control. I've never seen so much random trash in water before. Hats, basketballs, shoes, bottles, cartons, styrofoam, everything was floating out there. There were probably just as many small islands of trash as actual islands, it was disgusting. I highly recommend not going there. The weather was also pretty hot, it got gross pretty fast.

The good part of the tour was the random Chinese people and the Chinese couple we encountered. As for Chinese people, there was one girl wearing a Viagra shirt just as happy as could be with no idea as the meaning. Actually, it was more like a Viagra baseball jersey. It blew the mind. Another girl was wearing these weird tennis shoe heel hybrids. But best of all was the family we sat with. It was a Chinese couple from America and a guy from Singapore traveling together. They at first tried speaking English to me, but eventually we spoke mostly in Chinese. It was odd, they alternated between English and Chinese a lot amongst each other. The husband was from East Malaysia originally, the wife Taiwan, and the traveling partner from Singapore. They talked about their children and how they don't want to travel to China with them or learn Chinese or about Chinese culture, and when my roommate and I opted not to eat food since it was too expensive they ordered extra and insisted we eat. On a side note, Chinese know how to stir fry a pumpkin and holy hot damn is it good. In any case, they basically treated my like their child on vacation with them the entire time, it was actually quite fun. We all road a cab together from the harbor back to the bus station, then we all rode the same bus back to Hangzhou. They said they lived in Houston, but I probably won't see them ever again. They were the bright part of what my roommate and I agree was an otherwise excessively hot and disappointing trip.

On the up side, I did get a picture of this sweet statue. The islands were all themed. We went to the monkey island, the ostrich island, and a bunch of other islands that don't really translate well.

Real monkeys. I have lots of videos of the monkeys just running around. The cutest was a mom hanging one handed from a tree, the kid hanging from its stomach, catching food that was tossed to it with one hand and eating it. The most entertaining, however, were the children that got scared by the monkeys running free. Only in China can you take a boat to an island where there are 20 monkeys running around feet from you. The children screamed and cried and I was extremely entertained. This was topped by the child who while trying to feed a peacock on one of the islands enraged it and got chased around for a good 2 minutes, which in turn was topped by the child who got tricked into riding on an Ostrich. His parents, in what I'm guessing was an attempt at a surprise they in some deranged state of mind decided a child would enjoy, made him cover his eyes then carried him around the fence, into the place where a tamed Ostrich sat for taking pictures, and then placed him on the Ostrich. He opened his eyes and looked around, slightly confused. The Ostrich turned its head backwards to look at him, and the child screamed as loud as I've ever heard any child scream right at its face. The ostrich didn't even flinch, that thing must have been drugged to the high heavens, but the child ran for dear life. That is years and years of therapy in the making right there. He will never trust his parents to surprise him again.

And this is but one of the many excellent Engrish photos I am gathering. So beautiful a flower. It more need your love.
There is so much more I feel I should probably be writing, but I am getting tired rapidly. Thus, to distract you and let me bring this to a close, here is a picture of the fish on one of the islands whom, after what must be years of tourist visits, follow tourists around expecting food.

Thousand Islands Without the Dressing

About to get on a bus to head the Thousand Island Lake. Stories of that and the 4th on Sunday upon return.

The weather is so hot and there is no wind. I sweat through 3 shirts a day.

明天考试

Tomorrow is my first test. We'll see how I do, I have a 500 character essay to turn in tomorrow, I write another essay during the test, and I have another essay to turn in on Monday. All on the same topic. My writing feels so redundant, but I know it is for the best to help me remember.

So I asked my roommate if a few of these red dots on my hands were normal, I had 1 on each hand yesterday and today I had about 2 or 3 on each hand. They looked like bites but they didn't itch and there was no bump, just a small small red circle. He said they were fly/mosquito bites, and asked if I had others. I said I didn't think so, but as I said it I was inspecting my arms and discovered my underarms were covered with them. I have like 20 or 30 of these 'bites' on my arms and hands, and a few others on my leg. Bob says he has something like them on his back, but I'm a bit worried as to what they are. It looks more like a rash to me.

In following with the list of things that concerns me, we had a dinner with our teachers and students tonight, and after dinner some of us went to get Milk Tea. My teacher ordered a drink for me since I wasn't really familiar with and didn't really like Milk Tea, and she ordered this drink that among other ingredients featured orange juice and a raw egg. The raw egg part concerned me. But I drank it, and damn it was good.

The 4th of July is approaching, and before my roommate leave for the Thousand Island Lake trip I am in charge of figuring out what we are gonna do for our celebration. I have to figure out whether I want to go to a BBQ place nearby and see how American it is, or perhaps go to the Papa John's I saw when I went to the bank yesterday and see how it is. Either way, we are definitely going out to do something.

It Rains Every Day

I bought a Charmander toothbrush in the Campus Store today. I saw it and immediately had to have it, it was my big achievement for the day.


The other large achievement was finally going to the big Bank of China (literally translated) to get my traveler's checks changed. You have to go to the big (main) Bank of China to get them changed now, the small ones stopped changing them about a week before I arrived, something about wanting to be more safe with the influx of travelers for the Olympics. In any case, the person assigned to help me was in training, which made for a fun bank experience for all of us. Each sentence had to be spoken twice, once in the formal mode required and then again in normal terms. He had to say it all formal first since his supervisor was there, then when I stared blankly at him he would glance at his supervisor, then tell me what he had said in Chinese I could understand. The vocabulary differnce would be the equivalent of "This T-39 Form indicates that the undersigned is in agreeance with the aforementioned terms and your subsequent signature discloses..." and so on, and then he would say "Sign there to say that you are you." It was a fantastic waste of time. And the thing is it wasn't legal jargon he was using, there is just a very formal way of speaking Chinese involving the choice of certain verbs and terms over others and I just can't be bothered to learn customer service Chinese used for other Chinese, though I was flattered he was attempting to use it on me.


Now I will indulge how to upset your stomach in China. Step 1, when eating noodles, take your friends up on the dare to drink the broth solely for the sake of taking a picture. The first few sips are tasty, but remember that the key to step 1 is to ignore the fact that the broth is spicy and very likely going to ruin your digestive tract.



Step 2, celebrate your victory with your friends. This involves downing lots of the carbonated beverages seen in the pictures, this in no way encourages the war that has begun to rage in your stomach.


Step 3 is not pictured, but I can say with confidence that chugging the broth is probably a bad idea.

I have to conduct some research now, this weekend my roommate and I are going on a trip. We are getting reimbursed for the travel costs as long as we leave the city, so we have to choose somewhere fun to go. The winning idea right now is the "Thousand Island Lake". Each island apparently has a different theme. There is a bird island with lots of birds, and a cow island with lots of cows, and a flower island with lots of flowers, then there are interesting ones like lock island and such. I've seen the pictures, lock island and some of the weirder ones look really fun. No idea yet though, we are pressed for time as we can't leave until he is out of class on Saturday at 11 and have to be back for his class at 8am Sunday.

Jia you! 加油！

Hot Pot

One wall of my room has large glass doors leading out to the balcony, which was cool until this morning when I discovered that the sun rises really early in China. I hadn't heard my alarm go off, but rushed out of bed when I saw it was light outside. I rushed over to check my phone and discovered it was 5:30. I would have gone back to sleep, but the adrenaline from a fear of being late was already rushing through me. Curtains are not enough, I need something more intense.

Tonight was a night of hot pot. The general idea is you order the type of what I guess is best described as soup you want, then they place the giant pot into a hole in the middle of the table that has a burner underneath it. While it heats up you order all your things you want to place in fondue style, the sauces you want for dipping, and away you go. It was fantastic, the only problem was I had never personally been in charge of ordering before, I always had a Chinese friend or roommate to do it for me. Tonight was my night to be tested. I asked lots of questions and figured a lot out, but ultimately I still had to guess on a few things since Hangzhou's hot pot is different from the types I've eaten in America and Beijing. It was amazingly good, and I ordered all the right vegetables. The meat was a bit weird, some of it came out in large singular mound form that we had to shave apart with our spoons, and I'm not sure when or how but I managed to order some seaweed like vegetable. It was good though once you fondue'd it in the broth and then covered it in the sauce of your choice.

Pictures later, must prepare for class.