Actually I'm going to backtrack into Saturday night. I said in the last blog that I'd inform you all if something eventful happened, and something eventful did indeed happen. I was sitting in my room alone with the door open while adding pictures to Facebook. Suddenly someone put their hand on my shoulder and a girl's voice says "Hi. Can I know you?" I startlingly answered, "Yeah, sure!" It was this girl name Chris (short for Christina) who is very interested in bettering her English speaking and learning about America. She asked me MANY many questions for about thirty minutes, got my contact information and told me her room number. She'd like to go to dinner with our group, and she wants to meet our boys but told me not to get jealous when she talks to Kenney, haha.
There's this dog here, well there's LOTS of dogs here, but there's this one that seems to like me a whole lot. I named it Booger. Last night at the 711 when we were eating "dinner," I was freaking out because Booger was sitting by the side of the road (the road that is literally a death trap) and I thought he was going to die. But no! He sat until the "walk" sign turned on, and then he went. CRAZY.
Anyway, onto Sunday. I went to bed around 1 and slept til 11 30. Woohoo! If you think that's bad, I had roommates that all went to bed about an hour before me, and the last one up woke up around 4 PM. No joke. I skyped with Momma, Daddy and Garrett for TWO HOURS and then watched THREE HOURS of Lost. I messaged Kenney on MSN and asked if he wanted to go for a walk. On our way to the lobby, we met Arissa and Melanie who said that they'd just called TinMan who said he was going to take us out to dinner and shopping for things we needed. I needed luggage, but never found any. Sigh, another day.
We had a CRAZY cab driver on the way to dinner. We almost got in two wrecks because he pulled out in front of cars in the intersection and the he honked at THEM like it was their fault. Dinner was at this restaurant that I can't remember the Chinese name of, but it meant something like Learning Baby...or Talking Baby, the pronunciation was something like "Juan BaoBao." We ordered 11 plates for 7 people to split and the total was $480...that's about $15 US for ELEVEN MEALS. Holy crap, right? I had steamed and fried dumplings (made with pork, beef, or vegetable), hot and sour soup, some complementary AMAZING shredded bread and some AMAZING deep fried quesadilla-like thing with onion and spinach.
We shopped around and I drank a Kiwi Yogurt drink. Oh, you want to know how to say that in Chinese? It's Xie Eee Guo Duo Duo. Yeah, I'm smart, I know. It was reallllly good. They left the little seeds in their and their were a nice crunch. (WHAT?! AMANDA LIKING CRUNCHY IN HER SOFT?!! *HUGE GASP NOISE THAT OLIVIA AND I DO* Really, it's only because psychologically the crunchies were like ice, so it's still not ok.)
It began to rain and the cab driver on the way home sped through wet streets at 110 km/hour while on the phone and watching a tv built into his dashboard. I feared for my life.
My roommates threw a surprise snack night for Arissa and me tonight. I had fried fish sticks, dried squid, rice balls with red bean inside, sweet plums, jasmine green tea, wasabi peas (spelling?), and these really good I-don't-know-whats that tasted and crunched like cheese balls. (I thought of summer op when Fancypants Alex bought that HUGE tub of cheese balls.)
Monday :: First Day of Chinese Painting
Chinese Painting started today at 10 AM. I thought we'd be painting things like bamboo and mountain scenery and, you know, the typical Chinese painting things. But no, we were painting WRITING. I painted my Chinese name about fifty million times and I still can't do it correctly. Just you wait!
We had lunch and then went to pottery class for the second time. This round went a LOT better than last class. The teachers had come into painting class to tell us to collect leaves before pottery class. Turns out we were making bowls and dishes with leaf imprints inside. We got to make two each, and mine turned out pretty daggum good if I do say so myself. :) I just hope I can get all these things back home in one piece!
I have noticed that a problem I seem to have with these craft classes is that our projects are not assigned until it is time to DO them. So we go into class, have about ten minutes to come up with something UTTERLY BRILLIANT and then make it. This is me unsure of what to make in pottery class.
And here I pretend to have a direction.
Dinner was had and it made me very sleepy, so I laid down for a nap. My nap was cut short because one of my roommates didn't know that I was here and she began to sing...very loudly. I decided to go sit outside and sketch and who was there when I walked out the door?? Booger! He immediately jumped at me and then walked with me up the hill of death. I sat and sketched, then decided to go look at product design books and sketch in the library.
Tuesday :: Tai Chi Experience!
I woke up around 10 30 and showered then ate some Chinese Froot Loops (yes, there is a difference. They are colored differently and not as sweet) and drank the coffee that Chris brought me when she scared me half to death in my room. I skyped with Momma (on her Taiwanese birthday...it was an hour away in the US) for about an hour and then went to studio from one to four.
After studio, I stuffed my face with a salmon rice ball (YUM!) and then ran and changed clothes for Tai Chi! Tai Chi is that really slow self defense class that you usually see people doing in fields in the mornings. IT HURTS! My thighs are killing me! And I know they're just going to hurt worse tomorrow.There are no picture of the day that I did Tai Chi, but here are pictures from the week before when I didn't attend.
I had a craving for some sweet potato french fries so we went to the little food stand next to the seven (that's what they call 711 here, I'm just trying to be as hip as possible, ya dig?) and I ordered some di gua...that's how you say sweet potato. I even knew how to order a large AND I understood when they told me the price. I'm getting PRETTY good at this!
Kenney and I walked around campus and I found an abandoned monster-snail shell! It'll probably become a crafty something at some point.
Tomorrow we go to NDD Furniture Studio! More on the subject in my next blog.
(PS - The reason this post is droning on and on, day by day, is because I was waiting to post it with pictures, but I had to get the pictures first. Tin-Man usually posts them very quickly to his website, but Sunday/Monday pictures took longer for some reason.)
Good night, moon.
Your group is sounding completely stellar!
ReplyDeleteDon't worry you get to paint bamboo and flowers! I loved the bamboo and it was prolly the thing I did best in all the craft classes.
I am again super jealous of you. Your Tai Chi experience is awesome! I wasn't able to do much in that regard.
The sweet potato place is what we had dubbed the chicken shack!