Since I got here, the mosquitoes have been attacking me non-stop. I have more bites in the past week, than I had all summer. When I moved in, I found a mosquito net for the bed, but never put it up. But after being savagely eaten alive for a couple hours, I decided to drag myself out of bed and set up the net. However, the rods broke from being so old, which left me more frustrated and tired. So I tried knocking on other people's doors, and only Matt answered. I asked if he had a net, which he did, but it was one that requires hooks and lots of untangling. I brought it back up to my room and trying to figure it out, but was so tired that I just left it on the floor, crawled under the cover and hoped for the best. That morning was fun counting all the new bites.
I spent the rest of that day lazily doing very little except writing my syllabi. Turns out syllabus writing is not as easy as I thought it was. I spent so much time revising and thinking that I worked through lunch and into the early evening. By that time, I decided to take a break and so Matt and I met up with another Chinese English teacher, Zero. We hung out for a few hours and then called it a night when we realized we had to get up early to go to Jinan for medical testing in the morning.
That was this morning. We all piled into the same van as the one that brought us to Qufu from Beijing. We drove the 35 minutes to Jining, where we had to do more medical tests, just the standard ones. But, for our efforts and participation, we got goody bags that had mini bread buns, a hard boiled egg, and milk-in-a-pouch. We snacked on that on the way back.
After returning, Mike wanted to go downtown for some dumpling soup. So Matt, Makenzi, Jeremy, Mike, and I all took the bus downtown, where we ate at the restaurant adjacent to the place we had eaten at before. The dumplings were made with pork and put in a broth with cilantro and another spice. It wasa little like the wonton soup you would find in the states, but the dumplings were different. For a big bowl, it was six yuan ($1). After lunch, I decided to try this drink that was being sold on the street. I had no idea what it was, but basically, the woman handed me a cup and pointed at all these fruits and jellies that I should put in it. I put in a whole bunch of things, and then she put it in this machine, where she kept mashing the fruits and folding them over. The machine made the mixture cold, so after a while, I realized it was making a smoothie/slushie kind of drink. It was delicious. All of us walked around and I ate my snack. After that, we went to the Confucian Gardens, which were beautiful. We spent some time there, enjoying nature.
Mike and Makenzi decided to head back to the apartments, so Jeremy, Matt, and I went to the river to find the ping pong tables Mike had mentioned. We found them eventually, but as we did not have equipment, we left and went to the mall to find some. We did find some, but did not buy any, since we decided to go back tomorrow to play.
Upon returning to campus, I decided to eat dinner. I initially went to one of the dining halls on campus, looking for baozi, but could not find any, so I went outside the university. I bought 2 buns of mantou for 1 yuan (16 cents). These buns are maybe softball size, so they are relatively big. I also found baozi, of which I bought three for 1.5 yuan (20 cents). Two of them had a vegetable/noodle filling, whilst the other had a meat filling in it.
I spent the rest of that day lazily doing very little except writing my syllabi. Turns out syllabus writing is not as easy as I thought it was. I spent so much time revising and thinking that I worked through lunch and into the early evening. By that time, I decided to take a break and so Matt and I met up with another Chinese English teacher, Zero. We hung out for a few hours and then called it a night when we realized we had to get up early to go to Jinan for medical testing in the morning.
That was this morning. We all piled into the same van as the one that brought us to Qufu from Beijing. We drove the 35 minutes to Jining, where we had to do more medical tests, just the standard ones. But, for our efforts and participation, we got goody bags that had mini bread buns, a hard boiled egg, and milk-in-a-pouch. We snacked on that on the way back.
After returning, Mike wanted to go downtown for some dumpling soup. So Matt, Makenzi, Jeremy, Mike, and I all took the bus downtown, where we ate at the restaurant adjacent to the place we had eaten at before. The dumplings were made with pork and put in a broth with cilantro and another spice. It wasa little like the wonton soup you would find in the states, but the dumplings were different. For a big bowl, it was six yuan ($1). After lunch, I decided to try this drink that was being sold on the street. I had no idea what it was, but basically, the woman handed me a cup and pointed at all these fruits and jellies that I should put in it. I put in a whole bunch of things, and then she put it in this machine, where she kept mashing the fruits and folding them over. The machine made the mixture cold, so after a while, I realized it was making a smoothie/slushie kind of drink. It was delicious. All of us walked around and I ate my snack. After that, we went to the Confucian Gardens, which were beautiful. We spent some time there, enjoying nature.
Mike and Makenzi decided to head back to the apartments, so Jeremy, Matt, and I went to the river to find the ping pong tables Mike had mentioned. We found them eventually, but as we did not have equipment, we left and went to the mall to find some. We did find some, but did not buy any, since we decided to go back tomorrow to play.
Upon returning to campus, I decided to eat dinner. I initially went to one of the dining halls on campus, looking for baozi, but could not find any, so I went outside the university. I bought 2 buns of mantou for 1 yuan (16 cents). These buns are maybe softball size, so they are relatively big. I also found baozi, of which I bought three for 1.5 yuan (20 cents). Two of them had a vegetable/noodle filling, whilst the other had a meat filling in it.
Above: mantou
Left: baozi
Left: baozi