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Published: October 9th 2011
Pretty Red Tea Set
Won't you come in for a cuppa? My beautiful RED China (do you get the joke there? LOL) tea set, complete with dragon motif. I am so in love with this! I can serve oolong tea for 4! Who's in? LOL It's Sunday morning, October 9th and it has been such a busy week. All day last Wednesday was our excursion to the Hakka houses and then we were teaching Thursday and Friday. Yesterday, Saturday, I went to the gym and Joyce and I went and had mani/pedis at a local salon, get this, for a little under, cha-ching, $16.00! Wow, I could get used to that every week. Our internet connection has been sporadic, and so I have not been able to blog. But today, happily, I have managed to SKYPE with lots of my friends, though not all. Life is so interesting. I couldn't have called this one in a bazillion years....on Friday at our lunch break, Joyce and I were desperate for a taste of home....and now, this is where those of you who know me are going to be absolutely incredulous....we went to Pizza Hut for lunch...and it was SOOOOOO GOOD! OMG. Yes, I really did write Pizza Hut--I'm ALMOST embarassed to write that...but not really! LMAO Ham and pineapple has never, EVER tasted so good. Even if there was hardly any ham OR pineapple on that damn pizza pie......mmmm, stuffed crust and cheese......it was enough like
Interesting Chips
It's really true--what tastes and smells good is a cultural "idea" and varies therefore, by culture--cucumber flavoured chips. Strange. But then again, maybe not so strange compared to their dill pickle Canadian cousins? LOL What say you? the pizza at home to kill the cravings we were having. What can I say? Someone asked me via SKYPE, so, like when was the last time you were at a Pizza Hut in Canada? Um...I confess that I do not recall......I am channeling Oliver North here, lol, but I really do NOT. It's not my usual choice in a restaurant. Thai maybe, Pizza Hut, nope. Not usually. But it did satisfy us completely. While we were waiting for our pizza to cook, I happened to notice that every once in awhile, a little girl would peek around the corner at me behind Joyce and giggle. We were seated at the very back of the restaurant, sort of in a little alcove. The "hide and peek" went on for quite a while. Suddenly, there was a group of little girls between 7 and 9 years old surrounding us, giggling and saying their cute Hellos in their Chinese accents practising their English! We were utterly charmed. I told them "laoshi" (pr. laow shoe) which means, teacher, in Mandarin and said "Janada" (pr. just like it's written) which means Canada. They giggled and giggled. We said hello to all of them and
Oriental Oatmeal
Recipe for perfect oatmeal: 2 parts water, pinch of salt, 1 part oats. Mix together cold in your wok and cook over a low flame stirring often. Makes perfect creamy oats EVERY time. Enjoy. This is often our breakfast. I am the cook. Joyce, the scullery maid. We like our arrangement! LOL shook their hands, introducing ourselves while they shared their English names with us. Many, many Chinese people choose English names for themselves and even include them on their business cards and name-tags under their Chinese names. I have chosen a Chinese name for myself. It is Han Hong, and I chose the name of a popular Chinese singer. So, I am Han Hong Halcrow, triple H, LMAO! Couldn't have chosen better, eh? Funny!
On Thursday evening after work, we were invited out to a wonderful banquet dinner at a restaurant we'd never been to, a very good restaurant with great food, spicy food, with one of the founders of our school, James (don't know his last name but a charming and handsome host, to be sure) and we had such a good time, and we learned the Chinese art of toasting, with wine and beer and for those of our party who are not imbibers, guava juice! After eating and drinking WAY too much over about 2 hours, we all parted ways. While waiting for the bus I spied a street vendor selling tea sets. I bought myself a gorgeous Chinese tea set for about $30 Cdn, and clutched it
Chinese Chips
Up close and personal with the chip bag. LOL all the way home. Now, we had some trouble getting home after our Chinese banquet. The buses seemed full and taxis were mysteriously not taking customers. Turns out there was a taxi strike in the evening, just then! Our bus, when we managed to get on one and which took at least 20 minutes longer than usual to arrive at the bus stop, went past a cab in which someone had bashed both the front and the back windows out of! There were dozens of police milling in the streets close to our home and also directing the flow of traffic. Joyce and I had NO IDEA, at that point that there was public unrest and outcry because of the taxi strike and we joked at how safe we were tonight on our way home with a virtual police escort. But Rich and Diane, who were on the same bus as us, and who had to continue on to arrive home had less luck than we in getting home. The nervous bus driver went 2 more stops, still quite a way from their home and then ordered EVERYONE off the bus as traffic was at a stand-still and police were
So many pieces
Making tea is an elaborate procedure in CHina. One doesn't just pour hot water into the tea pot and let the tea sit. That would be uncivilized and make bitter tea! Cups and tea leaves are rinsed with boiling water first, then leaves strained and that tea discarded. Real tea is then made with new boiling water. Mmmm results are fabulous. I'm hooked! trying to stave off a riot. YIKES. Seems the population of Xiamen was unhappy about a taxi strike. They had to walk to the BRT and were able to take that and did make it home. Ed, our boss, also had to walk quite a ways when his bus stopped running, but fortunately HE grabbed a taxi which was taking paying fares and he made it safely home too. Thank goodness. Of course Joyce and I were completely oblivious to all of this and we were were just happy to make it home, me full and enraptured with my new treasure, my tea-set, intact. HA! I am going to bubble wrap it and newspaper wrap it and wrap and wrap, lol, just wrap it up tightly so it makes it home to Canada in one piece. Between that and the suitcase I'm going to need for all the tea I want to bring home, I am going to need a third suitcase, I think! LOL
Today, I am the queen of quesy--my stomach is off and I was feeling utterly exhausted on Friday and came home after teaching shortly ater 2 pm and collapsed on my bed and went into
Details....details....
Golden Dragon motif...lol..sounds like the perfect name for a restaurant...Golden Dragon! a deep sleep until Joyce returned home after 5 pm. We have seen evidence of the flu--2 of our teacher friends have had it, and also I've seen people being sick on buses--yes, you read that right....vomiting into a garbage can on the bus, right beside us no less.....rather revolting to be sure...but what can one do if one feels one needs to be sick and just happens to be on a bus? Often it comes on rapidly without warning and I felt sorry for the poor sick kid. And then I saw another kid being sick into a boulevard of bushes behind a bus stop. Yeesh. I'm going to be doing a LOT of Reiki today hoping to stave this off, lemme tell ya!
The blog for the trip to the Hakka village is going to take some time to put together since I took over 300 photos and at least 5 videos. I have included with today's blog pictures of my new tea set, (oooo, so pretty!) oatmeal made in a wok, which turns out to be THE perfect vehicle for terrific oatmeal production, by the way, try it yourself! AND a picture of some chips I had to buy, cucumber flavoured...definately WEIRD, LOL, but I HAD, just had to try them. LoL There are certainly different flavours here and I will try to get some more pictures by smuggling my blackberry into Walmart and snap away before they discover me....there are a million clerks in the stores here....at least 4 times the ratio as at home. They often follow you and watch you, a bit disconcerting, and part of it is just that we are foreigners and look different whereas at home one is so often ignored in a store, LMAO! Clerk? What clerk? There are no clerks! None youcan find when you NEED one, anyway. You could not get a clerk to put you out if you were on FIRE for Christ sakes! Sorry if you're a clerk. Just sayin' LOL! Stay tuned....more to come. My Hakka adventures are next. Scenery is stunning.
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Barb Bancken
non-member comment
Pizza Hut
Your trip sounds wonderful Carolyn. I know what you mean about the pizza. Ashley, Alysa and I were very happy to have pizza one day on our trip to China last summer. How long are you there for? I hope to do something like this one day but I am too chicken to go alone so I am hopping Bob comes with me. I enjoy reading your blog. Take Care and hope to here about your travels when you get back. Barb