Yak Butter

[edit: I can access blogspot again! Woohoo!]

As of today, my living room has graduated from "rustic" (3 out of 5 on the living room homeyness scale) to "comfortable" (4 out of 5). A friend just went out of town and generously let me keep her bookshelf and couch. And I have even gotten around to acquiring such civilized articles as a plant, a non-eye-frying, non-headache-inducing light bulb, some real speakers, and a bowl of fruit. And the fridge is perfectly situated so that no matter which of the two couches you sit on, you can open it and grab a drink without standing up.

The other night I got together with my friend Aileen for dinner. She's one of the people I met at the New Year's Day arts competition I judged at, and she's a professional singer and singing teacher. We went to a Tibetan restaurant in the Tibetan part of town, where we met another of Aileen's friends, J____--who also happens to be a kung fu teacher--and a friend of his, T_____, from Tibet. I think this Tibetan friend must have invited us, because he ordered and paid for everything.

We shook hands in the parking lot, and then T_____ handed Aileen and me each a long strip of white, silky cloth. Aileen put hers around her neck, so I did the same thing. Are these scarves? I asked. Everybody laughed, leading me to conclude that these were not scarves. The ends were frayed and the material had a tendency to get wrapped around things, so pretty soon there were little strands of white fiber clinging to everything. Eventually I gathered the cloth might be a Tibetan holiday tradition. A Tibetan tallis?

The restaurant was in a 3-story complex with a lot of statues, instruments, and art, and the interior was made to look like an old wooden building (I think this was carried out pretty well). As I sort of expected, the meal was not centered heavily on vegetable matter. I broke my normal rule by drinking some of the salty yak butter tea. Tasting like liquefied buttered popcorn, yak butter tea somehow manages to occupy that ambiguous space between a soup and a beverage. I also tried some kind of pita sugar sandwich, and an extremely crumbly, maroon-colored cake of tasty but mysterious contents that in terms of texture seemed closest to wet sand. At the end of the meal we played rock-paper-scissors/"stone-scissors-cloth" to determine who would have to eat the last three pieces. The main dish was a big plate of beef cubes (or was that yak meat?), and there was also a plate of meat dumplings. And we were each served a bowl of yogurt. I don't usually eat yogurt, but I ate it this time, and while I can't say I exactly "liked" it, it wasn't a bad experience. Finally, I think my friends were feeling bad that I couldn't eat some of the things on the table, because halfway through the meal the waitress brought out a heaping plate of french fries with ketchup.

I have a tutoring session in half an hour, so I'm just going to add a picture from my first teaching experience, on Dec. 27th, in Chongzhou. Christmas lessons!