After multiple hours of filling out forms, I biked to a nearby Italian cafe and had a very respectable espresso and a drab version of pasta puttanesca (but I ordered it without the anchovies, so maybe I was asking for it). Then I went to a slide show lecture on campus. A Chuan Da teacher from the UK named Jacob was showing slides from his extensive travels around China. The lecture was mainly intended for Chinese students (as opposed to students of Chinese) who wanted to practice their English comprehension. Every word was very clearly enunciated, and there was a vocabulary handout. I attended because it was also billed as being of potential interest to people wanting to learn more about China. Halfway through the lecture, the girl next to me turned and whispered "Jacob is a real gentleman."
Afterward I had dinner at Peter's Grill, the local Tex-Mex chain. I ordered a vegan burrito, but the tortillas were disgracefully small, and there wasn't much inside them except for peppers and onions. But this dinner was part of my field research. This weekend I am planning to have a few friends over and I am making burritos. None of them has ever had a burrito.
On the way home I bought a couple of pirated Chinese movies, thinking they might be good practice. Their titles are Cow and Wheat.
One more anecdote. When I first moved into my apartment, the washing machine was broken (I discovered this when I tried to wash all my clothes and after the cycle found that the soap was still where I had poured it and my clothes were all wet). After this I really needed to wash them, so I took them to a laundry nearby. Apparently there is no such thing as a laundromat in China, so I had to leave my waterlogged clothes (transported in plastic shopping bags) in the care of real laundrymen. The next day I got them back:
2 comments:
Writing to you from the land of burritos, I can only say, "what did you expect?" Sorry about your laundry. Your adventures are fun to read but for folks my age the "student/backpack" experience sounds like one long endurance test. I look forward to your next installment and wish you good food and fewer hassles.
When you said the girl whispered "Jacob is a real gentleman.", I laughed so hard and thought, "I guess he's doing pretty well in China." Other than that, don't expect western food to taste anything like they taste here in China, just like the Chinese food here doesn't take anything over there.
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