Waiter, There Are Chicken Feet In My Food
May. 8th, 2012 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarahblackMy first two days in Nanjing have been quite lovely. I've been able to rest up, catch up with my family via email and spend time with Halla. (I've also been able to get lost once, but Ash came to my rescue on his motorbike. Telephones are useful inventions. I highly recommend them!)
I really like travelling on the back of Ash's motorbike. My first night here he took me to the centre of town, and zooming around with the wind in my face was just what the doctor ordered! It really is quite ridiculous how hot it is here. The Icelander in me rebels at the idea of it being hot at night. But that's just how China rolls.
Speaking of the weather - Last night was my second night here, and I got to experience Chinese rain. It is not like Icelandic rain. For one thing, it is still hot while it rains. For another, the rain just comes pouring straight down from the sky and does not seem to come in a two for one special with wind that is designed to turn umbrellas inside out. So in China, umbrellas are useful! A lot of people use them in to guard themselves against the sun as well, so you can basically just go around with an open umbrella at all times without people thinking you are being silly.
Yesterday I got to explore Nanjing a little with Halla by my side. We went to an electronics market, and I had a hard time leaving it. I got a memory card (8GB SD card) for my camera and a 16 GB USB stick for just 2900 ISK! That is not a lot of money. (Like 23 USD.) I might go again and try to find a cheap tablet computer, but I'm not really sure. We also walked past the 1912 district which is full of restaurants and bars, went into a supermarket and got matching purses! (Soon we will not only have matching names and purses, but matching wardrobes, vocabularies and pet cacti.)
The supermarket had live fish in tanks, loose rice that you could buy by the pound (or whatever measuring unit they use here, I have no idea) and yeah - chicken feet.
I like the food so far. Of course, I am benefiting from Halla's research into where you can find edible food in the neighbourhood. She took me to a fantastic dumpling place that I would quite like to try again, and we went with her school friends to a place where we got a very delicious vegetable dish along with a slightly dubious chicken dish. It was a bit too spicy for me, and it was hard to tell which part of the chicken you were getting. There were organs and feet in there!
This morning Ash shared some of his breakfast with me. He had made bread from scratch and baked it with cheese, tomato sauce and black olives inside. It was just like a calzone! A very delicious start to my day. I swear, he just thrives on feeding people. (The first thing he did when I got to his place was feed me home made Syrian yogurt! So good!)
I went to class with Halla this afternoon. It was a very interesting class which consisted of watching a recent Indian movie (3 Idiots), with Chinese and English subtitles. The movie was great, and I'm thinking of going to class again next week when they are going to finish watching it. The film is three hours long, so the two hour class was not long enough to finish it in one go. I wish my University classes had included more Indian films.
We also went to the post office and to the travel agency to book train tickets to Shanghai. (4000 ISK for a return trip!)
We're thinking of going to see the Avengers at the cinema tonight. I'd quite like to do that so that I can experience a Chinese cinema, and not feel quite so out of the loop.
But first - dinner! Hopefully no chicken organs tonight.
P.S. No mosquito bites so far, although I have seen a bunch of them!
I really like travelling on the back of Ash's motorbike. My first night here he took me to the centre of town, and zooming around with the wind in my face was just what the doctor ordered! It really is quite ridiculous how hot it is here. The Icelander in me rebels at the idea of it being hot at night. But that's just how China rolls.
Speaking of the weather - Last night was my second night here, and I got to experience Chinese rain. It is not like Icelandic rain. For one thing, it is still hot while it rains. For another, the rain just comes pouring straight down from the sky and does not seem to come in a two for one special with wind that is designed to turn umbrellas inside out. So in China, umbrellas are useful! A lot of people use them in to guard themselves against the sun as well, so you can basically just go around with an open umbrella at all times without people thinking you are being silly.
Yesterday I got to explore Nanjing a little with Halla by my side. We went to an electronics market, and I had a hard time leaving it. I got a memory card (8GB SD card) for my camera and a 16 GB USB stick for just 2900 ISK! That is not a lot of money. (Like 23 USD.) I might go again and try to find a cheap tablet computer, but I'm not really sure. We also walked past the 1912 district which is full of restaurants and bars, went into a supermarket and got matching purses! (Soon we will not only have matching names and purses, but matching wardrobes, vocabularies and pet cacti.)
The supermarket had live fish in tanks, loose rice that you could buy by the pound (or whatever measuring unit they use here, I have no idea) and yeah - chicken feet.
I like the food so far. Of course, I am benefiting from Halla's research into where you can find edible food in the neighbourhood. She took me to a fantastic dumpling place that I would quite like to try again, and we went with her school friends to a place where we got a very delicious vegetable dish along with a slightly dubious chicken dish. It was a bit too spicy for me, and it was hard to tell which part of the chicken you were getting. There were organs and feet in there!
This morning Ash shared some of his breakfast with me. He had made bread from scratch and baked it with cheese, tomato sauce and black olives inside. It was just like a calzone! A very delicious start to my day. I swear, he just thrives on feeding people. (The first thing he did when I got to his place was feed me home made Syrian yogurt! So good!)
I went to class with Halla this afternoon. It was a very interesting class which consisted of watching a recent Indian movie (3 Idiots), with Chinese and English subtitles. The movie was great, and I'm thinking of going to class again next week when they are going to finish watching it. The film is three hours long, so the two hour class was not long enough to finish it in one go. I wish my University classes had included more Indian films.
We also went to the post office and to the travel agency to book train tickets to Shanghai. (4000 ISK for a return trip!)
We're thinking of going to see the Avengers at the cinema tonight. I'd quite like to do that so that I can experience a Chinese cinema, and not feel quite so out of the loop.
But first - dinner! Hopefully no chicken organs tonight.
P.S. No mosquito bites so far, although I have seen a bunch of them!
