Another Food Story

Over the course of the next few months it may seem as though we tell tales often concerning food. As unentertaining as the subject may be, it seems to be at the center of our most adventuresome outings.
Though this food tale doesn't contain a hilarious story, the pictures may be what grabs your attention. While dining in a local restaurant the other day, we simply had no clue as to what we might should order. Thinking surely that this was a safe idea, we asked the waitress to just serve us whatever she likes. She told us of a tasty chicken dish and we said, "Sure that'll be fine." This, my friends, was no ordinary chicken dish. Served right on top of the big bowl of chicken parts and potatoes was the following item. If you were ever wondering what a boiled chicken foot might look like, well there you go. It's declawed of course. Needless to say, it somewhat ruined our appetite for anything else that this delicatessen might have in store. I'm not sure we'll ever return there. But before we left we saw the cutest person in all of China.

She brought her mom over to us, pointed at us, and in what she must have thought was a whisper said, "Mommy, look foreigners." (in Chinese of course) Then her mom knelt and did her best to explain what we were, meanwhile, Brandon snapped this picture.
Deciding we couldn't handle anymore local food for the day, we gave in to the magnetic pull of Magdonlao (McDonalds). We had our first foreign cooked french fries and hot fudge sundaes. Boy were they tasty.

And...for some odd reason our computer has stopped uploading pictures. (it's tempting to blame everything on govt propaganda, so that's what we'll go with here) So no pictures of our local McDonalds, sorry. But check out our link to the right to see the rest of our pictures.

A Tale of Cho DoFu

The adventure began two days ago, while strolling the "shopping street", we wandered into an Adidas store. I (April) started looking the shoes over and innocently wondered whether or not they might have my size. I asked this guy standing next to me if they had a U.S. 11. He said, "For him?" and pointed towards Brandon. I said, no, me. And he just laughed in my face. Anyways...moving past my humiliation, I urge Brandon to start up conversation with this guy because rarely do we find someone that speaks a little English. So Brandon introduced himself to this guy who turns out is named Phoenix. (English name of course). Brandon successfully communicates to him that we'd like to have dinner with him on Saturday. We exchange numbers, he tells us to call him on Saturday with a time and place and we'll meet up with him and his girlfriend.
Moving to Saturday (yesterday)... We're walking around this nice little shopping mall and decide that it's about time to call Phoenix. So Brandon calls...next thing we know Phoenix comes and meets us in this shopping mall at 3 in the afternoon and says he has a surprise for us. He persuades us to follow him out of the mall. So we follow him, being a little reluctant and curious as to what is going on. We get to the door and he says, we're going to get a snack. Confused a bit, we make sure that we're still on for dinner that night as well. Phoenix says, "Yes Yes dinner good. Come with me for snack." Then the next sentence out of his mouth is what stopped us in our tracks. "I'm taking you to eat Cho DoFu." Literally, we stopped following him. Let me explain...Cho DoFu translated word for word is "Stinky ToFu" translated loosely, "Smelly, molded, old ToFu."
So Phoenix comes over, wraps his arms around Brandon and begins to shove him out of the door of the mall and towards the sidewalk. Brandon then begins his best defense of why we can not go eat Cho DoFu explaining to him that he's already tried it in Taiwan, our stomachs are still not doing so good, we're terrified of what is in it...blah blah blah, etc etc etc... Phoenix just laughs and says, "oh it's my favorite and you will try." So knowing at this point there's not way around eating Cho DoFu if we want to share with this guy, we begin what feels like The Death March. We only walked about 100 meters but let me tell you, the journey to this little street shop felt like hours upon hours because of what was going through our heads. We're thinking, even if we can manage to force feed ourselves some of this "food", our bowels are still not in the appropriate condition to handle some more authentic Chinese food.
None the less, we get there, he orders three plates full of Cho DoFu (one for each of us of course) and places it in front of us. The stuff on top is cabbage.

So being a little scared to try an entire square, Brandon does his best job of cutting a piece in half using his chop sticks, while Phoenix is shoving down his plateful. Phoenix then says, "No No No, you must eat a whole piece." Then he reaches over, uses HIS chopsticks to grab a piece off Brandon's plate, picks it up (still using HIS chopsticks), and shoves an entire piece into Brandon's mouth. USING HIS CHOPSTICKS! I about fell out of my chair laughing. It was quite a scene to see Brandon being fed by another man. I compose myself, and then he attempts to do the same to me! Brandon looks at me with huge eyes knowing I'll freak out if he tries that charade on me, and starts mumbling (because he's got a mouthful of Cho DoFu), "Just lean back, lean back! LEAN BACK!" Anyhow, Phoenix stops his feeding frenzy, I choke down a small piece of the stuff and try to occupy Phoenix while Brandon spits out his DoFu wad into a napkin.
We then successfully persuade him that we've had quite enough so he proceeds to eat all three plates of the DoFu.
This is Phoenix and Brandon before the feeding frenzy.

This is the kind lady that cooked up the Cho DoFu concoction.

And this is Phoenix working on the second of three plates full of Cho DoFu.

We did have dinner last night at a place that we prefer and luckily did not have to eat any more DoFu with Phoenix!

Modes of Transportation

We took a trip around the city yesterday snapping a few photos of the different types of transportation the people of our city choose to take. Here are a few...

This is our preferred choice of transport...the ever popular Taxi Cab. They are everywhere in the city, easy to flag down, and only cost 6 Yuan (about 70 cents) a trip. They do sometimes smell extremely bad inside, but we've learned to deal with it.
















This is...well, we're not real sure. But they're pretty popular.
















We like to call this one the backwards tricycle. We're not real sure how it works or how she steers but I'm sure she's learned to deal with it.
















Here's a nicer scooter. These are popular among the younger generation. This girl is covering her mouth because of the pollution and covering her arms so she doesn't get a tan. Most of the time the arm coverings just look like really long gloves.
















And the scooter-truck...

















But nothing beats the plain-ole-bicycle, as you can see, they are running rampant here...
This is outside of one of the dorms at our university.
































Young or old, rich or poor, nothing beats the bicycle. By the way, the thing she's wearing that looks like a welder's mask, is multipurpose: sunglasses, windshield, bug-screen, and to cover up when you pick your nose.

















So as you can see there are several ways to make our way about the city. Regardless of what method we take, it's a daily risk getting out amongst the bikes/taxis/buses/scooters/walkers. We just decide how daring we are and get out there and face the traffic!
But whatever we do, we must never take our tractor, truck, or horse down this street.

Oh, did I spill some water?

This may not actually be post-worthy, but we thought it was kinda funny and typical Chinese.
Yesterday we had a guy come over to work on our internet. It's been working off and on so we thought we'd have them look into it. Well, (April) trying to be the best Chinese hostess that I can be, offer the guy some bing shui (cold water). He looks at me, smiles, says thank you then practically turns the cup over on himself trying to down it all in one gulp. He totally got water all over the floor, himself, and the furniture close by. Brandon and I chuckle quietly just thinking, of course that would happen, I mean, it wouldn't make sense to just sip on it. So he finishes, hands the cup to Brandon and I'm thinking, next thing he's gonna do is go off in Chinese (knowing still that we can't understand him) and say something along the lines of, "Oh I'm so sorry, I got water everywhere, My bad, I'm such a fool, Don't blame me I'm just Chinese." But he simply bows to us, says goodbye, and walks out the door.

Welcome to Chiner

phew! We made it!
Brace yourselves for this might be a lengthy update. After quick and easy flights to L.A. we arrived only to find out that our overseas flight to Hong Kong had been cancelled due to a typhoon. With some "Amazing Race" skills we got everything switched over to Korean Air to fly into Seoul. We ran onto the jet way with a fellow company j-girl as the last people onto the plane. We were so relieved that we made the flight but knew there was no way that our bags would. Oh well, what can you do. So we get to Seoul, (meanwhile getting a play by play of flying overseas from the girl next to us. She apparently is quite the expert let me tell you.) and we do some begging and pleading to get a flight to Beijing. By the way, if you ever get a chance to drop by the Seoul airport it's well worth it. Coolest place ever. We took a few pictures.
Here's one of Brandon eating Dunkin' Donuts in front of a huge advertisement. It looks like he's in the middle of Tianamen Square.

So we get to Beijing, which is pretty much a trash for brains airport surrounded by poorest of the poorest shacks, but next to the "in-progress" airport for the upcoming Olympics. We get on a bus which takes us out to our little airplane to take us to our city. Being, yet again, the last people to arrive only makes us more of a spectacle as we get on the plane as the only whities.
Alas we made it to our city, and much to our surprise so did our bags! All eight of them! Truly a modern day miracle especially for Chinese standards. It was quite a long 36 hours of travel but we made it in one piece...well almost. Brandon kinda lost his head. haha

And now we're here in our apartment which we really really like. We're Americanizing it a bit so as to make it feel a little more like home. The building is only about five years old but you'd think it was built in the 40's when you look at the outside of the building. To summarize: Chinese sanitation project has quite a ways to go. Sorry, no pictures of it yet.
One thing we truly enjoy is how cheap everything is. Today for lunch we ate on $3 (US). But eating is sometimes an adventure as well. Check out some local delicacies.

MMMM silk worms and crickets. Tasty. But good news: We've found Skippy Peanut Butter and Pringles and Honey. That's exciting. And yes...dog is often on the menu over here. The other day we heard a dog yelping outside our kitchen window. It's not really that uncommon but for some reason we thought we'd check it out. So we go to the window only to see the chef from the restaurant across the alley decked out in his apron and hat scrubbing down a dog. Don't ask me what he was going to do with him next...

We'll try to post some pictures of the traffic sometime soon. It's pretty interesting. I'd kill myself if I tried to drive over here. It's a nice city though, with lots of things to do and I think before too long it will begin to feel more and more like "home."

NEW APARTMENT

Yeah that's right. We got a crib in our new city across the gargantuan Pacific. It's just sitting there waiting our arrival. Well...not sitting there so much. It's been worked on actually. You know, the usual: installing a western toilet, putting up walls for a shower, and being wired for a new oven. Standard issue in east asia. Fortunately, it's furnished. We'll just have to get a few odds and ends. Not sure if there's A/C but it already has high speed internet.
We'll be there in 10 days New Home...hang in there.

Our kitchen...if you couldn't already tell.

Our entry way with handy dandy already-installed coatrack.

Our new bedroom...

Living Room area. pretty nice eh?

Guest bedroom with specialty imported Mickey Mouse curtains.

Here's our lovely bathroom. In the future there will be a wall separating the shower from the rest of the room (so as to not make the toilet paper soggy.)

So come visit us in a year or so and check the place out for yourself!

July 4th

All of us folks here at orientation got to load up and go to our nation's capitol for the Fourth of July! It was pretty cool. There were so many people!! Let me interject at this point that if you are wanting to come see DC and have a packed day of all the Smithsonian museums you can get, the Fourth of July is NOT the day to do that. While it was neat to be there on the anniversary of our nation's birth, it seems that all of our other nation's inhabitants think this as well. Luckily...Brandon and I have been to DC before and had seen most of the major sights. And, having been told by our supervisors that the day was not intended for sightseeing, we set out with a few goals in mind. We were instructed to group in 4s or 5s so lucky for us, we got to group with some of our friends who just happened to live in DC for the last 2 years. hehe

So we set out on our journey. Like I said, the goals of the day were not to sight see. Some goals to accomplish were to: visit China town, eat an ethnic food for lunch, ride the metro and get used to public transportation, try to recognize as many foreign languages as possible, bring a foreigner closer to Father, and to obviously share our story with as many people as possible.
The first item of the day was to make our way to the White House by way of the metro. Being led by a DC native, this was cake for us. It was so neat to see the White House. What's not so neat is all of the cooks that sit out in front of it. Nonetheless, Brandon was able to share with one! So after the White House we headed over to China town, which is basically one block of everything chinese. We looked around for awhile and then, haha, settled on Indian food just around the corner. It being the fourth of July and most sane people wanting hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, there were absolutely no people in this restaurant. It was a wonderful buffet! I love Indian food! Quick story within a story...our friend asked our dark-skinned Indian-looking waiter if he was from India. He grinned and said, "No. Mexico." haha
After Indian food we hit a chinese restaurant to get a bubble tea (you'll have to come see us in china to discover what that is) and then headed back to the National Mall. (the area with all of the sights to see) We accomplished the rest of our goals in the Mall area and snapped a few pictures. It was a grrrrreat day!! We didn't get to stay for fireworks but they got rained out anyways. Here are some more of our pictures.

Gosh, Brandon...you sure have grown since I saw you last...

Hoards of people...

At Union Station. "Watch out for the Subway behind you Brandon!"