Brookline High School in China

China 12: On Friends, Family, and Dinner

weird food: "orange juice" (Despite having an abundance of oranges here, orange juice consists of pulp and a Tang-like mixture. Why they couldn't keep the pulp with the natural orange nectar beats me.)
that sucks: My video camera, which I'm using to document this trip, is not working. Which sucks very much b/c one of my main goals of this trip is to film and edit a video of it like I did before for my bike trip in France. This time it was going to be a lot better though b/c I've got a tripod and a little experience under my belt. So any donations for a new camera would be welcome, but of course prayer and incense burning for my camera's revival are also accepted.


After my short little entry yesterday, I feel obliged to explain how our little American dinner went. Lauren, Ian, and I went to the grocery store and immediately realized that being in China meant every single food in the store had to have that Asian taste to it. I dunno what we coulda been thinking when we thought we could just go to the grocery store and buy the ingredients needed for an American taste. The fact is Asian cuisine has little to no resemblance to it Western counterpart besides the fact that the majority of it is cooked.

I mean, today I made breakfast for myself. Nice and simple, eggs and potatoes. Now, I've got some breakfast potatoes that I really like and only I can make, so I wasn't surprised when my potatoes came out Asian in the absence of butter, onions, milk, and pepper. (milk's my secret ingredient). But honestly, EGGS! The universal staple of protein. Eggs which have not even had a chance to see the sun of their respective continent. They go straight from menstruation to mouth without feeling the world's air for a time longer than 30 minutes. How in the world could EGGS taste different in China?!!! But they did. I tried to pin it on the lack of pepper and too salty salt, but nevertheless the eggs have their own flava.

Anyway, back to yesterday's account. We managed to find among the three hundred shelves of soy sauce and chinese noodles, a foreign section consisting of peanut butter, Heinz ketchup, and Italian pasta. We decided the pasta would be the best bet for dinner since peanut butter sandwiches can get irksome without a nice glass of milk. We inquired about the possibility of tomatoe sauce and learned that all the foreign luxuries weren't gonna be there till April. (That's when all the foreigners come.) So we decided to make our own sauce. We got some flour and eggs to make pancakes. We decided that in place of syrup we'd throw in some M&M's Lauren had brought. And the ever so American, mashed potatoes. So, I then took off to meet up with my Chinese deskmate, while Ian and Lauren filled the shopping cart with Chinese semi-equivalents of various American ingredients.

A little digression. I met up with Sun Fan, my deskmate and aspiring friend, and four of his friends to go to a internet cafe and play Warcraft III. We got kicked out of the first internet place b/c they weren't 18. The second place we went was pretty sketch. It was hidden in a maze of allies and in front of its door there were a bunch of live chickens squawking. We had to climb 3 flights of stairs in the broken down building to a paint chipped door behind which was a series of computes wired together in a network. We paid and started playing Warcraft I had told them I knew how to play but I guess that was a bending of the truth b/c I've only really seen the game not really played it. So as I tried to figure out the chinese explanations, I gradually gave up and just surfed the internet while they slaughtered each others armies. Around me, the other people in the room were mainly playing computer games or watching pornography (thus the +18 rule I assume). I took off a little early to start dinner and went out by myself into the maze of allies where little kids stared at me and followed like I was the messiah or something. I had a nice little converstaion with on of them who seemed to have some sort of speech impediment which actually made him a little easier to under.


So anyway we began to make dinner, and I'm gonna have to make this story short b/c Edna just came over for lunch and I don't wanna strand her w/ my mom. So last night me, Ian , Edna, and Lauren made dinner and a mess. But it turned out alright and we actually enjoyed our semi American meal. We had a good time making fun of my mom in Chinese. Anyways, I gotta go.

so peace out

posted by dAVID @ 10:18 PM