The Seventh Day

I got up this morning at 450 and called my mother and talked to her which was nice. I then went back to bed, for 2 hours, I guess that Saturdays will be my break day for working out. I got up at about 650 and my dad called me, I talked to him and then talked to Mom again. It was funny, My dad left his office at the end of his call and showed up in the middle of the call to Madre. I saw the dogs in the background which was nice, Oreo and Pepper followed my mom around when she got up to go get something. I leave for the park in about an hour, I am going to eat breakfast and watch Dukes of Hazard for a little.
I took a shower waited for the people that I went with, Jimmy, Dr. Hongmei, and her son.

They showed up at 900 outside my building and we drove there. The traffic is crazy. On the way there I saw my first gas station and three McDonald's. It seems that Dr. Hongmei remembers my name by associating it with travel. Travis-Travel, and when she says them they sound the same.  We circled the park once before going into it because Dr. Hongmei's husband missed the turn in the first time; it took us an hour to get there. Once there we got out and walked into the park area. Let me be clear, we went into the park area, not the stadium area, so I did not get to see any of the buildings except from a distance. The Olympic Park is quite pleasant - there are lots of trails and paths for walking, and it would be a good place to run. But to be honest, the fact that it was cloudy and I still could not see the sun made me very depressed and made me miss home very much. We walked around with some friends of Hongmei's son, whose name I forgot, and their names I cannot spell. One of them goes to a Catholic school in Rhode Island and comes back for the summer. The other goes here. The students here do not get to pick the classes that they want to take.
We walked by the train station, The stop is called Olympic Green and it is on line 8 if I ever want to come here. After this we walked back to the car and said goodbye to Hongmei's son's friends and drove back to the restaurant (located in my building and below my window) to eat lunch. We had eggplant roll things, tofu and egg drop soups and a pork and dough thing with duck along with chrysanthemum tea. It was okay - the eggplant and the tea were the best.  

The drive up

 There was a small market with a horse pulled cart of fruit

the entrance 

Coke in Chinese

there were some pretty flowers

One of the Olympic Buildings

me 

In front of a sculpture about the building of the place 

more flowers

me again

They were promoting the Para-Olympic Games as well in 2008

Me at the top of the hill in the middle of the park. There was a lot of pollution in the air today

view of the area

view of the area

 the Central axis of Beijing

Tall tower

Tall tower

more flowers

view of the hill that I took the photo from the tower is behind me

this guy had a lot of stuff on his bike!

chrysanthemum  tea - it was quite good

 Eggplant - this was the best

 Tofu Soup

Pork that one rolled up into the dough (triangles  circling the meat)

The duck, and the egg drop soup on the right

I am going to go cook with Pimpan now

Pimpan was not in her room, I have no idea where she is at, so I left a message with her roommate and am now in my room playing ukulele.

Ben knocked at my door to tell me that Pimpan was in the kitchen with the others. I went down to help them. Everyone in the lab came to make food, and we made many several different dishes. They were all being made at the same time, so I will describe them to you by dish and not by chronology.  I was not able to record what was happening with every dish, so I picked a few and stuck with them in terms of learning to make them.  Before we started cooking I was asked to wash some dishes. With that request, I broke down a little.  I wash dishes at home all the time, and so when I was asked to wash them and started to wash them, I was overcome by homesickness. The people from the lab helped me - they are truly wonderful people, especially Pimpan.  They are trying to make me feel at home, and cooking helped me feel better. The fact that I was learning something new helped as well - I find I need to be engaged in active learning and then I am able to cope better.

Pimpan made a soup, I will do my best to describe how it was made here.
 It is called Tomyumkung, and it is a delicious shrimp soup. It is very spicy and has wonderful flavor.

The first thing that she did was place a seasoning cube in water on a hot plate. She then put lemon grass and Galangal, a type of ginger into it and tomatoes. This she allowed to simmer.

She then added mushrooms, peppers, salt and lemon powder to the soup.

This she allowed to simmer for a few minutes; she then added whole shrimps.  I personally think that shelled shrimps would have been better, but here they eat the entire shrimp so, it was okay either way. 

Once the shrimp were done cooking she added parsley and tomatoes.

We also made dumplings, to do this we took dill weed, lots of it and chopped it up very fine, then we took about the same amount of pork and added a little water to it and mixed the pork and dill. We added a special seasoning to it, salt and oil, and then proceeded to wrap the dumplings in the dough. They bought the dumpling skins pre-made so if you want a recipe for that, you need to look one up.  After making all the dumplings that there were skins for, we boiled them and that was it. 

washing the dill

  Finely chopped dill

 The special seasoning they used

  Rolling the dumplings

 Rolled dumplings

  I made one!

 I did not eat it though until it was cooked - raw pork and all.

 Boiling the Dumplings

 This was another dish that Mister Chi made, it had pork back (not the best of meat) and sweet corn. 

With the extra dumpling filling, I made a dish to go with rice, it was very spicy because I accidentally dumped Pimpan's Chile powder into it. I added some rice flour and an egg to thicken it. 

The lab group with all the food we made.

 Now Chunlin took the photo.

 Someone came in and all except me are looking...

I also was talking to Salma this afternoon. She and her husband are entertaining some guests so they were in there cooking as well. I would love to learn to cook some from her. She showed me how to make a curry very quickly, I did not get photos though - I was too busy trying to spell the Indian spices. 

She took oil and heated it, added onions, bay leaf, cinnamon bark, cardamom, cumin seed powder, chili powder, tamarack, coriander, (this was a spice mix with all of those spices and some others) and salt. She then took the duck she had cubed and put it in the pan and put more vegetables/potatoes/whatever one wants in it.

Mister Chi made a quick egg dish. He got a very hot skillet, flash cooked the eggs, took them out of the skillet and heated a fair amount of oil. He then flash cooked some vegetables(onions peppers tomatoes) and added the eggs back in. the dish was then done. 

While Chunlin was cutting the peppers for that dish her hands reacted to the peppers, they turned red and looked very angry.

We of course had rice to go along with the meal. It was all very good. I had to take a break in the middle of it to go and get some water and some milk to cool my mouth. I also grabbed my mangosteens and ate those. I offered them to others but only Mister Chi accepted.  I will have to go to the Wu-mart tomorrow. A person who ate with us (he may have been the boyfriend of Pimpan ) was from the south and said that his province was famous for the mangosteens. 

The talk at dinner was pretty good, they asked me about some English words and tried to teach me some Chinese ones. It was good. 

Tomorrow Pimpan, Chunlin and maybe one other person will be taking me to the Forbidden City and to the music store. It should be a good day. I will meet them in the lobby at 900. I will get up at 530ish to workout, eat breakfast and wash some socks and underwear (my mom would be proud).