In Amongst the Clouds and Mountains

There is a Chinese idiom which goes like this: 水天一色. Literally, it means the water and the sky are one color. Figuratively, it is used to describe scenes of beautiful nature, like this:

I went on vacation last week and spent four days in Yunnan province. Yunnan is to the west, below Tibet and above Myanmar. I flew to the capital, Kunming, on Monday morning. Kunming is the city of eternal Spring, but it was a mite chilly when I arrived, so I acquired a hat while I wandered about.

I was meeting a friend in Kunming for the trip (she was flying in from Shanghai) and was the first to arrive in Kunming, so I went to the train station to buy tickets for the sleeper train to Dali, our next stop. The train ride was fine. Our car was mostly empty, except for the train attendant, who decided to sleep in the empty bottom bunk in our compartment. Goodness gracious, but that man could snore.
We arrived in Dali early in the morning and took the city bus to our hostel, the Jade Emu, where we showered, brushed our teeth, and ate some breakfast before heading back out to explore the old city.

Dali's Old City is quite pretty. I'm not sure how much is actually preserved and how much is recreated for the tourists, but it looks nice all the same. There is endless souvenir shopping, which I definitely indulged in, delicious local food to try (all delicious, especially the fried cheese), and some cultural points of interest, including a Daoist temple and a piece of the old city wall.

City Wall overlooking the Jade Mountains

fried cheese sprinkled with sugar

Our second day in the city, we were joined by another friend, arriving from Chengdu with a friend from France. We spent the morning exploring the Three Pagodas just north of the city. We didn't pay the 121 kuai entrance fee, but we did get some nice pictures from the little alleys and streets around the outside.

 

 

 

 

the third one is hiding

In the afternoon, we rented some bicycles and rode out toward Erhai Lake and poked around in some little villages. It was warm and pleasant and it made me realized how much living in the city drains the soul out of me. I miss blue skies and open views and seeing the stars at night. Ah, well. Absence makes the heart grow fonder?

Thursday morning I had to catch the bus back to Kunming and fly back to Guangzhou while my friends, who had more vacation time, continued on to the town of Lijiang and possibly Shangri-la. I sat next to a man from Israel during the five hour bus ride, and we shared a cab and lunch while we waited for our various flights. It was a lovely vacation. I met new people, saw beautiful countryside, ate delicious food, and enjoyed four days of not thinking about work. I can't wait for my next vacation. Happy NewYear, everyone.

also, I may have found a stargate

Viagem Para Macau

Olá! How are you this week? We're only four days away from Christmas, now, and look what I found!

Of course, I had to go to Macau to find a religious Christmas display, but no matter. Yes, a friend and I spent Tuesday in Macau, the former Portuguese colony on the southern edge of the Pearl River delta that is just 2.5 hours from Guangzhou by bus. It was a lovely day, and there are many gorgeous places to visit in an afternoon (because that's what you've got, after you've spent an hour standing in two border-crossing lines to get in).

 

 

 

 

Largo do Senado

 Unfortunately, I spend the majority of the day being queasy and generally unwell. Family, remember that year at Sturbridge when I was suddenly, inexplicably, and horrifically ill on Sunday morning and you all joked about my "wicked hangover" while I lay in the grass and moaned? Yeah, it felt like that. I was still mostly mobile, but I had absolutely zero appetite, so the only culinary news I can give you about Macau is that they make delicious almond cookies and egg tarts. My traveling companion enjoyed a sardine bun and a wonderful-smelling waffle thing that was slathered with peanut sauce and condensed milk, as well.

Like Hong Kong, Macau is an interesting jumble of East and West, old and new. Also like Hong Kong, they speak predominately Cantonese and write in traditional characters, but Portuguese didn't seem to be as prevalent as English is in Hong Kong.

Art Park Graffiti

We visited the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Macau Museum (lots of dioramas; surprisingly interesting).

I have no idea who the person to my left is.

You may be asking yourselves, "Why are all those people wearing funny hats?" Well, we'd seen some signs announcing festivities for the 12th anniversary of the handover, when Macau was given over to China in 1999. We just didn't realize that it was the actual day. So, after taking this picture, we went into the museum, and about an hour later, we emerged to find a large group of people and a parade forming up.

little altar by the corner of a shop

Well, we didn't stay to see the parade. And we didn't actually go to any of the casinos for which Macau is famous (what with the mysterious illness, I figured my luck wasn't too good). But I did take a picture of the Grand Emperor:

It was all very fancy. There's also a Venetian, and MGM, and a Sands. It's called the Las Vegas of the East for a reason, but I don't think I missed much by sticking to the historic quarter.

Well, my thoughts have been drifting home a lot this Advent season, almost as often as you see fake snow in Christmas movies. Snow or no snow, it must be chilly. So here's a picture to cheer you up, direct from the courtyard garden:

December 21, 2011: sunny, 73 degrees

Next week's blog will be late, as I'll be on vacation. But for now, Merry Christmas. May your holiday be bright and full of cheer.

Even the Wise Men Went West for Christmas

Wednesday already? And another week bites the dust. Have I done anything? Let’s think back:

Thursday: work. Friday: work. Saturday and Sunday: work. Monday: work. Tuesday: sleep. errands. Wednesday: cookies. My goodness, how exciting is my life? Actually, the only thing I really did this week was resolve to write more interesting and profound blog posts, and it looks like I’ll be failing miserably at that!

           

Well, actually, I do have a few stories to relate. Last week at work, I had to cover a couple of classes for coworkers on vacation. They were, respectively, a class for 4 year olds and a class for for 5-6 year olds. Good heavens. It’s a whole different ball game with the wee ones, innit? It reminded me of my semester working a couple of hours a week in a kindergarten. As cute as they are, and as relatively easy it is to plan and execute a lesson for them, I’m rather certain that early childhood education is not for me.

Also, it’s gotten a bit chilly in Guangzhou. I think winter has finally arrived.  When I say it’s chilly, I mean it’s been in the 60s during the day and the 50s at night. Now, that isn’t really cold, I know. But be honest: it is the temperature at which you start running the furnace. And there’s no heat at work. There’s no heat in my apartment. It’s cool enough in my apartment today that I’m wishing for my fingerless typing mitts.

Even running the oven all morning didn’t really warm it up (likely because my oven is the size of a breadbox). But add coffee, tea, company, and cookies, and it was a warm and cheerful morning. I had a few friends over for some Christmas cooking making today. We made sugar cookies and vegan gingerbread cookies.  Here is my tip of the day: use fresh ginger in your cookies. Seriously, the flavor is outstanding. The spices, the sugar, and the bite of the ginger, yum. I have leftover molasses, and I think, as soon as I dispose of the four dozen cookies I now have in my apartment, that I might try making gingerbread. I’ll need to find a baking dish, though. (The cookies were made on a sheet of tin foil placed directly on the wire rack of the oven. It worked fine.) We listened to some Christmas carols, watched last year’s Doctor Who Christmas episode, and decorated the cookies with white icing, crushed up candy canes, and mini M&Ms. I couldn’t find food dye or colored sugar, not that I looked very hard, but I think they came out pretty well. They’re certainly delicious.

I was going to make smörbullar, too, but I figured we’d made enough cookies for one day. I’m going to take the remaining cookies in to our school Christmas party tomorrow. And if I’m feeling particularly nice, I might make some cookies next weekend for my Christmas Eve classes.

I’m getting excited for Christmas, but I keep having flashes of memory, at random moments, about all the things I might be doing at home this time of year. The kids at school will be gearing up for finals. LL Bean will be decorated and having fun events. The various Bowdoin choral and musical groups will be holding concerts. The First Parish bellringers will be ringing their way around the local churches. I can close my eyes and be in a thousand moments: breathing in cold air, sipping too-sweet cocoa, scraping snow off my windshield, testing the thin ice on the muddy puddles whilst in search of the perfect tree.  I can recreate a lot of Christmas here: cookies, tinsel, candles, carols. But I can’t make it snow and I can’t make it smell like evergreens. There’s a tree and decorations in the lobby of my building, now, but I can’t make the people in this city feel Christmas joy. There’s no connection. It feels like Christmas in July – all the trappings, none of the spirit.

Well, it is as it is and that is how it is. I’m looking forward to Spring Festival. Maybe that will make up for sense of emptiness that I just can’t shake.

I’ve gone and made this post a tad depressing, haven’t I? Well, let’s dispel these gloomy clouds, and sum up this surprisingly long blog post, with a great joke for your next party. Should you find that the rum is all gone (or the cookies, or the cake, or the little carrots, whatever) you should turn to a friend and remark, “Maybe if we stop observing it, it will appear!” That’s right, Copenhagen Interpretation jokes*, FOR THE WIN. Why yes, I am currently reading a book about Einstein, Gödel, and early 20^th century physics, why do you ask?

*This joke was told to me by an online friend, after I wowed them with the classic math pick-up line: I wish I was your derivative so I could lay tangent to your curves. Math and science humor will never not be funny, and you know it.

It's Christmastime in the City

Good Tidings

Ok, kith and kin. I've got 164 Christmas songs loaded onto my mp3 player and Pandora holiday stations queued up. I've trawled Netflix and Hulu for seasonal movies, and holiday decorations have been procured.
 

Seasonal, right?

In case you ever doubted it, all the lovely cheap plastic holiday decorations are made in Chinese factories, and over in Haizhu Square, we found a tight little alley full to the gunwales with Christmas decor. All that was missing was loudspeakers playing tinny Christmas music.

It's an Advent wreath. I just need some candles.

We're not the only ones in the holiday spirit, either. I was exploring a new mall today, called the Taikoo (It's across the street from OneLink, which is next to the Grandview, which is next toTee Mall, which is next to the Grandbuy. Yes, there are five giant malls all in a row. I know. It boggles the mind.). Anyway, they (all) are decorated for Christmas, and I would say about half of the stores are playing Christmas music. At Taikoo, you can even visit Santa Claus at his home in Finland.

Really. Santa lives in Finland, according to the sign.

In other news, I bought some cute new shoes. There are Buddhist shoes. What does that mean? Well, they're made of cloth and they are super comfortable. A coworker recommended them and we hit up the shop on Changshoulu yesterday. She was picking up some boots she had ordered. Apparently, other people think it's getting cold. I admit, last weekend, the mornings were a tad nippy. I was happy to wear my sweatshirt on my walk to work. But yesterday and today were back in the high seventies. There are flowering trees in bloom in the courtyard garden. I keep wondering if I'm still going to be waiting for it to get cold when Spring arrives. Ah, well. I have always wondered what a year without shoveling is like.

I'm ready to hike a holy mountain. Or go to work. Whichever.

Last, but not least, you can check off another item on the list of things I've never tried. A few friends and I went for some cupping on Monday night. Cupping is a TCM practice in which a flame is held in a glass cup, which is then quickly applied to your back, where it forms a mild vacuum seal. It's not particularly painful, and I did find it a bit relaxing. It does, however, leave a few ... well, calling them bruises makes them sounds painful. Hickeys? Yeah, they're like hickeys. The depth of color of said marks can then be interpreted to make suggestions for better health. Mine apparently tell me that I've got an overabundance of fire in my body, and should avoid deep fried foods and spicy foods.

Creepy looking, but painless.

That's really all I have to say this week. I hope all of you are getting into the Christmas spirit, regardless of where you are. Remember, Christmas is not a place, it's a frame of mind.

18 Days to Christmas!

This blog is: Humoristic! Diverting! Thrilling!

You can note it down: on November 26, 2011, I wore a sweatshirt to work. It was chilly enough at 8:15 in the morning to warrant a long-sleeved layer. This didn't last through the day, of course, and I carried the sweatshirt home over my arm. And, yesterday and today were both sunny and in the 80's. Ah, well. It gives me hope that maybe it'll be cool enough eventually that I can justify shopping for a cute sweater (which will be not nearly as fun as it is in my head, because 3/4 of the stores will not have anything in my size and it will be very depressing).

Actually, yesterday was so nice a day that a group of us went to Chimelong Paradise amusement park. It boasts a number of rather horrifying (to wimpy kid me, anyway) roller coasters along with the usual assortment of rides. I rode the swirly swings, the log-flume-esque ride, one called the Giant Frisbee which rotates and swings, some other spinny-kinds of rides, the mildest roller coast not actually in the kiddie area, and the most nausea-inducing teacups that I have ever ridden. Dad, I completely understand your pain, now. Wow. We all staggered off that one and had to sit down for a little while inhaling the medicated oil.

Yes, medicated oil. I've never actually been ill on a theme park ride, since I usually stick to the milder ones. So I can't really recall if places like Funtown or Six Flags provide vomit bags and dizziness-busting medicated oil at the exit gate of each ride, but Chimelong Paradise does. Actually, some of the rides (like the teacups) had a little bin of vomit bags on the ride, in handy reach of your seat. Ha, as if I could have been that coordinated while holding on for dear life and fixing my gaze on the center wheel. Regardless, the oil -- eucalyptus, perhaps? -- was actually quite helpful. I rubbed it on my wrist and then sniffed at when needed.

It was quite a fun day, and perhaps the most amusing part was the English descriptions of the rides on the park map. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
"Rotating Cup: To experience the fame in the cup"
"Jumping Tower: You are a hero in future. Jumping up and down in the tower and scream as you like."
"Carnival Parade: Come on, my dear friends! To enjoy the whoopee with your passion."
"Double-deck Carousel: Riding on the cockhorse to find your wonderful child's time."
"North American Lumberjack Show: The conventional Lumberjack Show appears here. Humoristic! Diverting!Thrilling!" (sadly, this show was closed for the day)
"Motorbike Launch Coaster: Let's come 'ride' a coaster together."

Honestly? Half of those sound like either the description of a low-budget slasher film or really terrible euphemisms for things that really shouldn't get 4-star family ratings.

Not much else to say about my week, really. I did manage to find some dried coconut and confectioner's sugar, so with any luck, I'll be able to make some needhams on Friday. Tomorrow, alas, I'll have no free time as I've got to attend work training for our new textbook series from 9:30am-4:30, then I have an evening class until 8, and I still have quite a bit of planning and grading to do before the weekend. Sigh. Thinking about it makes me tired. Is it my next day off, yet?

With any luck, next week I'll have some time to go find some Christmas decorations for my apartment. The whole city is decorated already, and it's really strange, and strangely depressing, to see Christmas celebrated with such disassociation from its cultural roots. More on that later in the month, when I expect I'll be feeling quite a bit more blue (I've expunged "I'll Be Home for Christmas" from my collection. Too. Darn. Depressing.). Still, I feel a powerful need for some fake poinsettias and plastic evergreens. Maybe if I spray some of that fake snow on the ledge outside my windows, and paint the corners of the windows with it, I can pretend it's really cold outside.

A Guangzhou Thanksgiving

 I anticipate a busy couple days off this week, so I am distributing my blog writing over a few days. It’s Monday as I write this, and I have just finished writing a long shopping list. You see, I am attempting to host Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday. It’s my very first Thanksgiving away from home and family, and in an attempt to not be overcome by holiday blues (let’s consider this a trial run for Christmas next month… that’s gonna be a doozy, no matter what I do), I concocted the wild plan to host my own Thanksgiving for a few of my fellow ex-pat friends. Well, let’s just start with a few of my immediate problems, shall we?

            1. Where the heck am I going to find turkey in Guangzhou?

            2. I don’t have an oven, and my stove only has two burners.

            3. I own two cooking vessels: a wok and a small pot.

            4. My flatmate is a vegan.

            5. I’m sure I can find cranberry sauce somewhere in this town, but where?

            6. We have two plates, two bowls, 2 mugs, and 4 sets of silverware.

I take problem solving as a personal challenge, and it’s what makes life worth living, right? Let’s get to it. Turkey in it’s traditional form is out. It’s probably prohibitively difficult, but I wasn’t even going to try. After all, I don’t have an oven. I plan to solve that problem tomorrow by going out and buying a tabletop oven… yes, I basically mean a toaster oven. So, size-wise, roasting any sort of meat is out. Solution 2: I could buy a whole roast chicken. But it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving, you know? So my final solution is this: sliced deli turkey from the American import grocery store. Is it going to cost an arm and a leg and my firstborn child? Yes, but hot open-faced turkey sandwiches? Worth it. And payday is next week, anyway.

Whatever you paid per pound for you turkey, I can beat it.

Speaking of the American import grocery store (Corner’s Deli, underneath the CITIC plaza, if you have arrived here via a Google search for “Thanksgiving Guangzhou” hoping for help – you know I tried it, too), I am almost certain they will have canned cranberry sauce and possibly even stuffing mix, as well. If they don’t, I have two backup plans. Plan B:  Kitchen Carnival (in Zhujiang New Town). Plan C: homemade stuffing with dried cranberries [potentially the best plan, except for the extra work in my tiny little kitchen].

Cooking and eating vessels aren’t really much of a problem: I really ought to get around to owning drinking glasses and one of my guests has volunteered to bring paper plates. No, the biggest brain cramp in the vegan (and two vegetarian guests) element.

Googling “vegan Thanksgiving” actually gets you dozens (well, thousands, but who looks beyond the first two pages?) of really helpful suggestions and recipes. Honestly, vegan food can be delicious-looking, and it really doesn’t seem all that hard (side recommendation: the Youtube series “Cooking with the Vegan Zombie.” It’s got recipes. And zombies. Really, what more could you want?). Except, except: they pretty much assume you have access to a Whole Foods or an organic grocery store or at the very least, that your local shop carries vegan butter and soy creamer and some strange product called vegan cheese (I don’t want to think too hard about it). Hey, vegan bloggers: I went to Hong Kong just to get some quinoa! But oh thank goodness I bought some: apparently, it’s a protein substitute, so persimmon, orange, and apple quinoa will be our vegan main dish. And vegan maple pumpkin pie for dessert. 

Time passes quickly in the past tense.

Part 2:

Phew! It’s over. The guests are gone, and the dishes are (mostly) washed. It was quite fun, and I’ll call it a success. But let’s give you a bit of a recap.

Tuesday shopping went well, if long. I hit up the vegetable market, then went over to the Tianhe area to spend an ungodly sum on Western foodstuffs (Ocean Spray cranberry juice! Stovetop stuffing mix!). I did end up needing to go to Zhujiang, too, but I managed to get everything on my list except canned pumpkin. Alas, I had to make soup and pie from scratch. It’s better that way, anyway. Last on my list, I picked up a small oven at Gomz electronics store. It is always so fun to buy a big ticket item in a department store. First, you find a salesperson – they’re usually hovering behind you, so that’s easy. Then, you tell them which one you want. They write your name and the product number/price on a ticket, which you take to the cashier and pay. The cashier gives you a receipt, which you take back to your salesperson, who dispatches another clerk to the storeroom to get the actual item (or if it’s smaller, say, a thumb drive, they unlock the cabinet and get one out for you). When it arrives, if it is a small appliance, they often take it out of the box and plug it in to show you that it does in fact work. Finally, you get your item and you’re good to go. The only snag here, for foreigners, is our pesky foreign names. They are often confused to no end by my name. Which one is my surname? Which is my given name? Is that an ‘n’ or a ‘w’? Is this one word or two or three?

New oven!

I immediately tried out my oven by baking the pie on Tuesday evening. I also made the soup. They both came out well. I roasted my pumpkin first, which the oven did lickety-split. The pie, too, cooked evenly and problem-free. I am so happy with having an oven. I’ve already got a list of things to make (smörbullar, cookies, lasagna, baked apples, baked potatoes, more pie…).

Maple Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Crumb Topping.

This morning, I made mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing, vegan stuffing, roasted garlic, roasted green beans, Golden Orchard Quinoa (recipe by Kathy on Healthy Happy Life blog), and cut up my deli turkey into rough as-if-off-a-roast-bird slices, which I heated up in gravy. A couple things about my vegetables. First, think of green beans. Got it? Okay, look at mine:

They're Jolly Green Giant sized!

And while we're at it, let's talk sweet potatoes. Did you know they came in purple? Neither did I, until I started peeling. And yes, mashed purple potato looks exactly like homemade play dough.

Apparently, purple sweet potatoes are common in Japan.

Also today, I popped out to grab some water and soy milk from the store so my guests would have something other than boiled tap water and cranberry juice to drink. I decided to be really fancy while I was at it, so I walked up the road a bit to where there is a cluster of three or four fancy wine shops. Now, this was a heck of a lot classier than my usual wine-buying experience (usually a place called Bootleggers). I walked in, and, as it was 10 o’clock in the morning, I was the only customer. This means I got my own trail-behind-me clerk, and another clerk watched us from the counter. I perused the selection (US, France, Italy, but also South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and others), which ranged from price-I-would-actually-pay to holy-heck (but that’s true in most wine shops) and finally picked a French chardonnay (do I sound like I know what I’m talking about? Yeah, no, I Googled ‘thanksgiving wine pairings’). My clerk helpfully got me a chilled bottle (because I’m going to drink it immediately? At 10:15am?) and the cashier clerk rings me up while he puts it in a nice bottle-dimension cloth bag. Then he carried it to the door for me, which he held open while I exited. Yeah.

So, finally, it was down to trying to get everything warmed up for dinner at the same time. This is a challenge. And honestly, I could have not bothered, as half my guests were 30 minutes late, and so things were getting a little lukewarm again by then. But it was fun, nonetheless, and everyone said nice things about the food. That said, I have tons of leftovers, but I blame my (totally inherited, thanks Mom) tendency to overestimate the intake capacity of a dinner guest.

Dinner for 8 (feeds 16)

Despite the work and the challenge of finding ingredients – oh, who am I kidding, I loved the challenge – I really enjoyed hosting Thanksgiving and having friends over. Of my six guests, only two of them are Americans. One is Chinese, Polish, one is from the Philippines, and one is Canadian. Of the Americans, one is Columbian-American and one is Chinese-American, so they told interesting childhood stories of celebrating this holiday as part of immigrant families. For three of my guests, this was their first Thanksgiving. It was fun to be able to share and compare our traditions.

We’re not so different, you see. We all have things for which we are thankful. For me, I am thankful for friends (who helped me do the dishes after dinner, despite my protests), for the opportunity to live and work in a foreign country (despite the occasional difficulties and annoyances), and for my family (even if I can’t be with you this Thanksgiving). I am thankful for support when I need it and good advice when I ask for it. I am thankful for being alive and being loved. So Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Where in the World?

I think I need to see a doctor. I don't feel sick, or anything, but I did do something extremely out of character this week -- I up and took an overnight trip without any actual pre-planning. In fact, I never really did develop a plan, but rather took things one activity at a time. It was a busy two days, but quite enjoyable. I have lots to say, but I'm wicked tired and don't feel like typing it right now. So, I shall just give you some pictures, and leave you with a challenge (not a very difficult one): Where did I go?

As for last week's challenge (what's interesting about the elevator panel in my building), the answer is: there are no 4s (my building has no 4th, 14th, or 24th floors). This is because the Chinese word for 4 (si) is a homonym for 'death' and is quite unlucky.

One last picture from the trip:

Way. Too. Early. (there was music, too)

Rainy Wednesday

Wednesday again. It's been a pretty uneventful week. Yesterday and today have been quite rainy, but I'm not complaining too much, because the temperature today was down into the 60s. Going to run some errands, I actually wore a (light, short-sleeved) sweater.

As nothing much has happened this week, I thought today I'd take you through a typical Wednesday. And since I spent several hours today writing the first draft of a short story for a holiday exchange, I don't feel much like telling you in words. So, get ready for the Rainy Day Photo-Essay:

The day begins in my room. I overslept a bit today, as I don't usually set an alarm on my day off. The rain meant the light coming through my window was more muted than usual, so I slept later. But once I was up, I turned on my computer and got ready for the day.

First up, breakfast. 

I was feeling lazy this morning, and I have milk to use up, so breakfast was Frosted Flakes. They are imported and really expensive, but I love them. Actually, this is one of my biggest problems with cooking and eating in China. All the of the foods that my brain insists should be categorized as 'cheap' and 'typical' are actually quite often expensive. To name a few: cereal, cheese, peanut butter, and tomato-based pasta sauce. On the other hand,  I can get frozen dumplings, instant soup noodles, and steamed buns wicked cheap, so it evens out.

After breakfast, I ran a load of laundry. The washing machine is still working fine (hooray!). The laundry room is a little porch off the kitchen. It overlooks the "inside" of our building, and I can see the laundry room-porches of many of my neighbors. I absolutely do not spy on them.

I walk back to my room through the living room with my cereal. Normally, I would eat breakfast at the table (it's off the the left in this picture), but today is Video Chat day, and I want to catch my family before they go to bed. Now that Maine is back on Standard time, the time difference is 13 hours.

Okay, breakfast is eaten, phone calls are made, and the laundry is hung up to dry (good luck, considering the damp weather). It's time to leave the apartment and run some errands. Who can spot the interesting fact about the elevator panel?

My first errand is down Huanshi Road, about a five minute walk. I have to stop by China Telecom and pay the internet bill for the month. This is actually remarkably easy, once the clerk gives me a tutorial on how to use the self-service machine. Of course, I'll have forgotten the exact process by next month, and I will annoy whoever is in line behind me next month as I take three minutes to decipher every menu screen.

If you go a little further along Huanshi Road, you hit a block or two of shops that all seem to cater to the same clientele. Oh, look! Theodolites! And I know know that the Chinese word for surveying/mapping/cartography is 测绘ce4hui4 (and theodolite is 经纬仪 jing1wei3yi2, which is wicked cool, since 经纬 also means warp and weft, so 'theodolite' ends up being 'warp and weft instrument' ... okay, so it's really like 'latitude and longitude instrument').

After paying for my internet access (it's about 29 USD per month, if you're curious) and fondly gawking at surveying equipment like a loon, I hop on the bus to the shopping mecca at Tiyu West Road. I'm not actually shopping today (I did my grocery shopping yesterday) but I've got that story to write, and I need a writing environment other than my room. So, I'm headed for a cafe for a cup of tea, an armchair, and the mild distraction of people watching (rather than the major distraction of the internet).

There are several buses that go to the same general area, so I usually take which ever comes by first. Today that was the B3. The B buses are the rapid transit network, and stops at the central station. From there, I head underground to cross under the major intersection. This takes me through one end of Festival Walk, which is an underground shopping street. The B bus station is on this end, and the other end is the Tiyu subway station. Oh, and according to the sign on the wall, this is also an emergency air raid shelter.

Looking toward Tee Mall, while standing at Victory Plaza mall. There are four other malls within a five minute walk, not including Festival Walk, which is under the intersection in the picture. In all honestly, I think there is more retail space in this square mile than there is the entire state of Maine.

After a couple hours at the cafe (yum, oolong tea) I head back to my apartment. Bus 78 drops me around the corner from the building I work in (see the big blue curving sign? Our school is on the third floor, behind the sign and extending toward the right). Before crossing the street, I stop at my favorite steamed bun place for some black rice buns.

It's still raining, so there are no street vendors on my stretch of sidewalk. Too bad, I could have gone for a roasted potato.

Through the gate, across the courtyard, up the elevator to my floor. It's supposedly the 29th, but it's actually only 26 stories up. Have you solved the 'what's up with the elevator panel' problem yet?

Dinner tonight is leftover vegan pumpkin soup from yesterday with the black rice buns I bought on the way home. The soup isn't as smooth as it should be, since I don't have a blender, but it is kind of delicious, if I do say so myself. Pumpkin soup plus the cooler weather today? Gosh, a girl could almost think its Fall!

The day ends with a little blogging and catching up on Castle. Tomorrow morning I'm off to the fabric market to pick up the pants I had made, then it's back to weekend-mode as I get ready for the long days of classes on Saturday and Sunday. But for now, I think a cup of tea and then bed. There's nothing quite as relaxing as a rainy Wednesday.