So yeah, Friday afternoon we all piled onto buses and rode out into a little community north of Beijing, where they sent us in little groups to different families to make and eat dumplings and have fun Chinese chatting time. My group was me and Jackie (Jacqui?) Mills and Drew, and at first we were all like eheheh our family does not speak a word of English, this is going to be awkwardddd, but when we got there they were sooo nice and fed us all kinds of little snacks and it was fun. It was an older couple, and the grandfather was a little hard to understand, but the grandmother would come out from the kitchen where she was preparing dumpling ingredients to explain things. Their son (who actually spoke very good English despite having learned it in high school and never having practiced since!) and his wife came over for dinner with their little daughter who was four, and she was sooooo adorable. Interestingly, I found it a lot easier to understand the little girl's Chinese than the grandfathers, although usually small English-speaking children are kind of hard to understand unless you're used to the way they speak. She was a sweet little girl and we had lots of fun playing with her, although she didn't want to take a picture with me :( Witness our attempt:
That's her running away from my scary scary self.
But anyway, making dumplings was totally fun. At first it was painfully obvious which dumplings were American-made because they were soooo hilariously ugly, and the Chinese ones were so neat and uniform, but we got better. They prepared the fillings and dumpling skins for us so I don't really know the whole process from scratch, but I'll probably have to try to make dumplings for you when I'm back in the States because a) it is fun and b) I will be in severe dumpling withdrawal. Here's Jackie and me with one of our prouder dumplings:
And a dumpling-making action shot!
We never got as good as our Chinese grandmother, but it was still piles of fun, and our family was the best ever, and we exchanged contact info with the son and we might go on a fun trip sometime and they gave us each a box of chopsticks and it was a happy fun love time! Woooo!
But that's not all I did this weekend...Saturday morning Quynh and I went shopping in the city! First we went to Silk Market and then to Xidan. I bought a pretty pretty skirt at Silk Market for 40 kuai, for the first time feeling like a got a genuinely good price by bargaining. The lady wanted 90-something for it, and I was walking away (for real) when she yelled after us that I could have it for 40. It was the only thing I bought, but somehow the whole day's experience made me feel a lot better about bargaining. Before I was really intimidated and afraid to buy things that would require me to bargain, and although I still think it's kind of harrowing (it takes a lot out of you to have to argue for a long time just to get a decent price, so it's easy to get worn out and stop caring), I'm not so scared as I was before. It helped that I just got to listen to more bargaining exchanges, and it helped that my roomie was there for moral support (and more advanced Chinese comprehension), and it even just helped that I've been here for longer now and I have a slightly better feel for how much stuff should probably cost. It was a nice trip, and we rode the subway and strolled around in the newly arrived sunshine and ate delicious melon popsicles. Hen hao!
Saturday night we all went out for a joint birthday celebration for Eva and Shifu, who we know from Hip-Hop Club. Shifu isn't his real name, it's actually a Chinese form of address for a skilled worker or a master of something - he's called Shifu in Hip-Hop Club because he has mad hip-hop skillz! But yeah, so we had a big group of Chinese and American students and we all had delicious Korean barbecue together and sang Happy Birthday in English and Chinese and had 2 huge cakes and afterwards we went out to dance. At first we all took cabs to some out-of-the-way club that turned out to be closed, which was kind of a mess, but in the end we went to the usual foreign-student joints in Wudaokou and they played a fun African-tribal-danceish song at Zub and it reminded me of Graceland except more party-dance-club-esque. I was hen happy, but then it was late and I was tired so I didn't stay to dance long. Jacqui and I went home early, but not before buying baozi...at 7-11! Basically, American 7-11s need to carry baozi. Yeahhh.
On Sunday I went to Beijing International Christian Fellowship again, and didn't get lost this time, and fixed my heels so they don't give me blisters, and it was fun and they had a free lunch afterwards for new people and I made new friends and actually ran into another girl in my program who has been going to the same church since last semester but I just didn't know it. It was a beautiful sunny day and the church service was amazing and I was just sooo happy! I was going to try to take the bus back to campus, but it was so nice out I ended up just walking all the way back to Beida by accident. I basically did nothing all afternoon, and then in the evening it was like oh shoot now I have to study! but Jacqui and Richard and I went out to this little coffee shop in Wudaokou to study, which was strange because they only turned on the lights at the tables where people were sitting so it got really dark after a while and we felt like they were trying to kick us out. But the most fabulous part was this rather drastic notice that I saw next to the bathroom sink:
"Please frugally use water - otherwise the last drop of water in the world would be the tears of our human beings"
It was awesome. Then the place closed and we still had mostly just talked and not done any studying, but we found a tea house that is open 24 hours AND you get unlimited beverages plus little snacks for 18 kuai per person (a little over $2 American). I don't know how they make any money, but frankly that is AWESOME and I think we might have to go there all the time. Feichang hao!
Anyhoot I have class in 20 minutes and I need to eat a little fooooood and maybe look over my words because every Monday is super-duper-3 quiz Monday! A quiz in every class! Hen haooooo
Posts
1 comment:
Did you ever learn in Spanish about how to bargain in a market?
"¿Noventa pesos? ¡Es un robo! Vale cuarenta pesos..."
Post a Comment