After that, I observed Wendy for a bit. He and Leo made medium and then sat down and talked about what was happening in the lab - in English terms, he has to create a one page description (abstract) and have it approved by Dr. Cheng so that he can get "credit" for working in the lab. Basically it is a paper that says, "hey, I have done this for a summer and here is what I did".
After that I went and had lunch with the women of the lab. They had a meat that tasted like brisket in a stir fry. It was wonderful. I think it may have been real beef brisket. There were lots of sweet onions and green onions in with it as well. Again, I found it to be especially delicious. I also had bok choy. Chungli did not like the brisket stir fry at all (that meant more for me!).
I waited until about 230 to head back to the lab. I found Leo and Tony mixing soil. Wendy had some plants that he needed to transplant into larger pots. I got to clean up after they all had made a rather substantial mess. I also got to take part in the cleaning of the autoclave. Wendy does not speak English well at all. He speaks entire sentences to me and then just stares at me waiting for a reply. The results are typically rather interesting (because I am guessing as to what he has asked). After transplanting, we went down to the greenhouses and put the pots there. I asked why we had not just transplanted down there and not made a mess out of the turtle water that Wendy decided to water the plants with. He pulled it out of the aquarium. After multiple tries to explain, with me rebutting every excuse they made with some logical retort, it finally came out that the greenhouse was not supposed to be used for this. That the plants are not really supposed to be there. After that I watched Leo play League of Legends for a few minutes before Wendy walked up to me and asked it I wanted to swim. I told him yes, but not today. He told me that a 50 swim pass to the Reiman University pool was 800 Yuan. I told him that I would be going like 10 times, and at 30 yuan per entry, it is much cheaper to just buy an entry each time.
We then proceeded to bike over there, to the pool that is. It is a standard 50 meter pool that is much more crowded than the other pool. I wish that the other was still open but that is out of my control to change it. I will go every two or three days here. It is going to be about a 30 minute walk. The bike that I went there on was a joke. The Chinese seem to not believe in biking quickly; we were going way slower then I could have run there. It should work out for a few swims a week though, just to stay in shape.
We biked back to the university, I gave Wendy the keys to the lock on my bike for him to return to the owner, and I walked back to the dorms. I stopped by 211 (my Bangladeshi family) and checked it they were home. I told them that I would bring music down at about 830. The electricity is again out in my room. And still is. I went down to the desk and gave them 50 yuan while pointing at the lights (you have to pay if you go over your allotment for electricity), but it has not come back on. I am going to go down and see what the problem is.
I did some yoga in my room, and tomorrow, I will probably go swim. After yoga I went to the Sesh Wan place and had a "light" meal of fried rice, gizzards, lamb, and peanuts and soybeans. When I walked into the place, the soybeans and peanuts were not in their normal place and so I did not know if I ordered them or not. Because of that, I made the mistake of getting rice as well. So it was a rather large amount of food for dinner - but I ate every bite.
As I was walking back to the dorm, I ran into Vincent and another guy, and I said hello to them. They went to the Kung Fu restaurant this evening and then we ran into two new guys, Danni and Emanuel, one of them runs in the evenings every day Vincent told me that. I did not catch which one though. We headed back to the dorms and then ran into Samess and said hello to him.
Once in my room I grabbed my hard drive and headed down to the Bangladeshi Family's room and shared some music with them. They got a bunch of good stuff, in my opinion at least. I told her not to worry about deleting any of it. Misma, the father, kept trying to give me food, I had to politely refuse. It is not that I do not like the food, on the contrary, I think that it is some of the best stuff that I have ever eaten, but I was extremely full from dinner, and legit-ly did not want food. I said goodbye to them at about 930 and then went in and talked to Ben for a little while. I like him a lot more when he does not talk about politics; I will just be sure to try to steer our conversations away from there in the future.
Waiting for my Mom's evening call (morning call for her). I will be watching some movies. And eating my daily dose of watermelon.
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| No they do not have a replica of Kyle Field in Beijing - just sharing a photo I have on file. Of course, the landscape has greatly change since the taking of this photo - Kyle Field is totally being revamped. |
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| The seeds and medium I made up today. |
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| Lunch from the other day. |
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| More lunch |
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| Tony and Lili |
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| Pimpan and Dr. Cheng |
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| The furniture that was destroyed by the workers -- remember when I mentioned jackhammering taking place below my window...well, it was actually the destruction of all this office furniture (which looked perfectly fine). I don't know if they were worried that people would take it and try to sell it, but it can't be used now! |
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| Lunch today - beef brisket stir fry...Mmmm. |
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