The Fourteenth Day

Got up late today at 800 and called Moo (that would be my term of endearment for my mom). We had a good 30 minute chat and got caught up on the going-ons at home.  Breakfast consisted of: yogurt, the weird fruits that I need to find out the name of, a PB&J, and some other fruits.

I went for a walk and walked along the edge of the campus: there are a ton of little restaurants and smoke shops. I was going to buy some yogurt, but the market was super crowded, and the checkout lines are always slow, so I gave up on that idea and went out through the "in" door (as opposed to going in through the out door which is a Zeppelin album).

I practiced on the ukulele for an hour or so then went swimming. Just as I was going to leave for my swim, Ben stopped by and wondered if I wanted to go to lunch, I told him about swimming so we are planned to go to dinner tonight with some of his lab mates. I got in about 4000 meters before the pool folks said that it was time to get out. Workout today: 2000 straight free, 1000 warm up and then some various mixed sets. Afterwards, I walked to the Carrefour and bought some more jujube newtons, some bread that almost looks like naan, and a mystery loaf that appealed to me because it smelled wonderful - very cinnamon-y (or "cimma-nen"-y, as my older brother would say).  The line for checkout was ridiculously long.  There were several check-out lanes, but there were only two open.  And it wasn't like there was more help available - a host of other workers just stood watch over the checkout people - weird. Then it was back to the dorm. On the walk home I splurged on a 50 cent ice cream cone that was pretty decent.

I talked to Kelly who is in California for a while, she stayed up very late to talk which was awesome. It was great to hear from her. At 550 Ben came and collected me to go to dinner. We walked to his lab which is in the same building as mine but a floor lower and picked up another two (two Chinese guys, Fly and forgot his name). They were showing us to the place to eat. We then walked quite a ways to a Chinese BBQ place. The food was very tasty but not too generous in portion size, at least in my opinion. It seemed to be enough to fill up everyone else (maybe because they hadn't swam 4000 meters). There were boiled peanuts and edamame, then meat on skewers, toast out of a rice bread type of thing, chicken wings and more meats. Most of the meat was lamb. I also tried century eggs which are eggs that are stored in clay and kinda pickled - interesting. After dinner, we started our walk back to "home".  On the way back, I stopped and got this snack that was similar to a quesadilla but without the cheese. It did have pork in it (told you I was still hungry). It was okay, but there was a tremendous amount of grease in it which did not exactly make me feel great in terms of my G.I. tract.  I bought another watermelon and indulged on it tonight. It was a 6 kg watermelon (estimating), and I ate about a fourth of it tonight. When I cut into the melon, it literally blew up because it was so ripe:  it just cracked every which way but the melon was very good eating.

All my photos today center on food -- it was a good theme for the day!

 Angry birds cola

 Ice cream and the Naan-like bread

Century eggs - made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime, and rice hulls for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing.

Food from the Chinese Barbeque place: lamb skewers, edamame, boiled peanuts, and the century egg.  In photo below are the toast "wings".

the impostor "quesadilla" (above) and the very ripe watermelon!