Cow stomach lining (tripe) - sort of really gross. It's really chewy so you are trying to eat it for about five minutes and the entire time you're thinking "this was the actual stomach of a cow", not cool
Pig's blood in block form - not bad. It comes in bricks sort of like tofu. Actually it is very similar to soft tofu. The grossest part was that I was at a hot pot place when I had it so you had to dip it into the boiling broth first. When we did that, blood leaked out and turned the pot red for a second.
Some observations:
The Chinese think we are as crazy as we think they are about the whole toilet situation. Marie and I went into the bathroom at a more Westernized mall one day and there was a line. We could see ahead that a few of the stalls were still available but no one was going in them so we assumed they were out of order. When we got closer Marie asked the lady in front of us if we were right and they lady spurted out some Chinese and made a circle motion with her hands. Marie looked into the stall and started laughing. The woman had been saying that there was a Western toilet in there and that she didn't want to use it. All the women in the line were refusing to use the Western toilets and preferred to wait rather than use one.
The first day I didn't have my camera on me I missed a great China picture. Andrew and I were walking around his neighborhood. In China they still use the wooden stick method a lot to carry heavy loads - attach two even loaded things to each side of a stick and then put the stick across your shoulders or over one shoulder. Well we came across a man with his stick and two heavy loads - but instead of food or tools or anything else, he had cages full of pets that he was just walking around the neighborhood selling. There were bunnies, hamsters, small birds, pretty much any small animal you'd want. A bunch of women had crowded around him it seemed looking for a pet to take home. And no...these animals were not dinner, they were pets.
Fun word I learned - niu zai ku - which means jeans but the actual translation is cowboy pants
All around town are these blue and white small easy-build apartment buildings. They are the construction workers living spaces and since all of Shenzhen is under construction we've got a lot. This is the nicer version of worker living spaces, for a lot of them they get little shacks put together by pieces of metal.
Since being in China I do not think I have bought a single article of clothing in an actual store. Across Shenzhen there are street stalls and the such selling anything you would ever need. Sometimes it's literally just a person with a hanging rack standing on the side of a busy street. Most of the times if I see one of these I'll stop and glance through seeing if I can find anything for 30 kuai or so (about 5 dollars) that would help my wardrobe out. Unfortunately most of the items aren't the best quality so I am afraid of putting them in the washer. As some of you might know, I am not very good at being domestic and I procrastinate. The pile of stuff needing hand washing kept growing. So I was very proud of myself this evening because I did a whole load of laundry by hand. I even went out and bought a special bar of soap to accomplish the task.
Cliff gave me the idea to play the question game in class. You ask every student to write down a couple questions and put them all in a bag. Then you go around the room and pick a student. The student gets to choose either to pull out a question and ask you or have you pull out a question and ask them. The catch is you need to screen them a bit before you start asking, I am dealing with high school students so some were not the most appropriate questions...But there were still some great ones and these were some of my favorites that I received. (click on the picture to make it bigger)
I was cleaning out my bookshelf and came across this. We all got certificates at a large banquet in Beijing for completing our TEFL training.
Oh Chinglish :)
Harry Potter!!!! I was so happy to find out that HP7 was a world premier and even in China it opened on November 19th. I of course sent out an email to everyone in the program asking who would like to join me for the great event. Eleven of us headed to the Chinese theater on Friday night and had a great time watching the film on the big screen (with Chinese subtitles). It was interesting because we were the only white people (not surprising, China is in love with HP too) and if a joke or something funny happened in the movie we were the only ones in the crowd to laugh. The humor just didn't seem to get through the translation, poor Chinese people - no laughs for them.
This is Windows of the World at night from across the street. The lit up tower is the mini Eiffel Tower and the rest is part of the German village.
Sort of random picture. This building is on my walk every day to the bus. It was having a celebration of some sort and had put out all these big red balls. I just thought it was weird that it had that clear plastic covering as well. But after I noticed them here I started seeing them all over the city that week.
In China, they don't have true popcorn. Any time you get some at the movie theater or at these little popcorn vendors it's caramel corn! Granted, caramel corn is pretty good too, but sometimes you just want that nice salty buttered popcorn that you know and love. The only place you can find it is in Shekou, around the Western part of town and there you can get the great Act II Butter Lover's packaged microwavable popcorn. I finally caved and got myself a couple packs. I went to eat some the other night and it was my first time using the microwave here. I had never noticed before that there wasn't the usual "popcorn" and such settings (not that I ever really used those much before, but it's still nice to have) - instead we've got things like rice, fish, and skewers settings. Well luckily microwaving is easy and every true American knows how to pop some great popcorn without burning it.
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