Daily Discovery
August 2018
August 31: If you didn't know me before stumbling upon this blog, then you have probably figured out by now that I love food, and I love cooking, especially when I have a lot of time to fill.
Today fits that criteria, as do many days lately after heading back to site and encountering this interim period of time before classes start for new students, whom I will be teaching this semester.
So, I am accomplishing my goal of eating healthy at the same time, by testing out healthier foods, such as my vegan sausage patty that I made for the first time today: tofu and mushroom base, with caramelized onions and spices for flavor, thickened up a tiny bit with oatmeal and flour... it is very delicious and will make great burgers in the future once I make some buns!
August 30: One of the colleagues at my school today texted me on WeChat and asked me if I like corn. 'Sweet corn?' I asked. 'Of course!' She said, and 'of course!' I said back! And so she stopped by the teaching building that afternoon after classes to drop off a few ears of sweet corn that were grown on her husband's company's farm. A great dinner, a great friend, and a great reminder of simple kindnesses each and every day.
August 29: Before I left Guiyang, my friend Conrad gifted me with a few cups of the beans that they had ordered online - I was inspired by the wonderful bean hot pot, and other bean dishes, that I ate in Guiyang, and I wanted to be able to incorporate beans into my diet here in Wuwei... beans, however, are difficult to find - they don't have canned, cooked beans, and many beans that you can buy never quite soften up no matter how much you soak 'em and cook 'em. Luckily, Conrad found a suitable variety on Taobao and shared some with me to try out before I buy my own.
Here's a glimpse of my first shot at many beans: I made a dish with caramelized onions, mushrooms and spinach to add some flavor and depth to the beans!
Oh, and speaking of beans, make sure to check out my full blog post on My First Trip to China's Second Spring City, which is out today!
August 28: It's incredibly nice to be back in Wuwei when the weather is cooperating - no dust storms, no blasting heat, just cool relaxing breezes to usher in the fall weather ... unlike in Chengdu, where the thermometer flirts with 100 degrees just about every day.
I like to take advantage of these days to enjoy nice walks around the city and around campus - today, my walk around campus took me to the new teaching building for the department where I teach. It's still under construction, so I'm not sure when we will move to that building, but it looks pretty nice so far!
August 27: I hope you all don't mind - and don't get sick of - hearing about my new blender and all of the new, if perhaps strange, uses and foods I manage to create it with it.
I made a pretty delicious roasted tomato sauce today - started by roasting up all of these delicious vegetables with olive oil and then the blender made short work of the rest of it. I used the sauce to make a baked tofu dish with a few eggs I cooked on top .. a nice dash of veggies and protein!
August 26: I've finally made it back to site in Wuwei - it was a long trip, with a restless night on the train, bringing my total number of train hours since arriving in China to 425. Wow.
How can I celebrate such a feat?
By breaking in the new blender that I purchased a few days ago and arrived a few hours ahead of me in Wuwei. I put it to use, easily making peanut butter and enjoying that atop some freshly baked bread for dinner. Back to site, back in time to a meal I ate often in the States - back to work tomorrow preparing for the next semester!
August 25: I am heading back to Wuwei today - and I've realized that this must now be a tradition for my host family: giving me a box of Chinese kit-kats to take back with me.
I recall the last few times I've left Chengdu, my host mother has given me a box of these treats, which I won't complain about, since I like these candies quite a bit! They are definitely not as sweet as American candy, but they are perfect for my sweet tolerance now.
August 24: It is my last full day in Chengdu before heading back to site tomorrow and Sunday, preparing for the next semester of classes, even as all of the new China PCVs head to their schools for the first semester! Congratulations and welcome!
Of course, it wouldn't be a true final day in Chengdu with my host family if we didn't have a hot pot dinner. Tonight my host family ordered a few interesting, but in China fairly common, dishes to throw in the hot pot that I'd have to share with you!
Duck tongue?
Chicken liver?
Blood jelly?
Which do you want to try?
August 23: I was extremely fortunate today to have been selected to join 8 other current PCVs in China for the opportunity to meet the Director of the Peace Corps, Dr. Jody Olsen, who arrived in China this week to help mark the 25th anniversary of the Peace Corps in China.
She is amazing, and I was truly awed by the opportunity to meet, eat dinner and chat with her during a roundtable discussion.
Our dinner was also a unique experience - combined dinner and Sichuan opera show!
August 22: I had my last free day in the city of Chengdu today, so I decided to head back to my host family's house, and I did a bit of Peace Corps reporting work while my host mother did some of her work, and to reward ourselves afterwards, we naturally had to bake some delicious food.
Blueberry muffins, but we didn't have a muffin tin, so it's kind of like muffin bread.
And it's more like a cake than a muffin, but that really doesn't matter when you have the magic ingredients of eggs, sugar, butter and blueberries ... it will always be good!
August 21: It's been extremely hot here in Chengdu the last few days, peaking at over 100F - add in the humidity, and it's time to sweat the moment you walk out of the door.
Luckily, though, it rained this morning, clearing up the skies and knocking the heat and humidity down a notch .. leaving us with a beautiful sky and a cool breeze.
Here's a look from inside the array of apartment buildings in my host family's area, as if we are just "frogs living in a well."
August 20: Every time I come to Chengdu and end up visiting the Peace Corps office or hanging around the Sichuan University campus, I always have to visit a restaurant that a few Volunteers from the previous cohort introduced to me.
They have this steaming metal pan on which they serve rice and a blend of seasoned, stir-fried vegetables that are a delicious mix of spice and texture ... even though it's steaming hot outside, it's still worth the visit!
August 19: It's my last day hanging out with my host family for a bit - the next week I will be helping out with a few training sessions for the end of the new cohort's Pre-Service Training, and then after that, I will be heading back to site to begin the fall semester of classes!
We took a day trip to see some other friends today in an 'ancient city' outside of Chengdu, which might be part ancient city, part restored-city-turned-tourist-attraction. In either case, the weather was cool and the food was fresh, but my day was made when the friend that we met was the same friend that I met for the first time last summer ... and she remembered one of the snacks that I loved last year, and bought a bit for me to take back to Chengdu!
It's called 米花糖 （mi hua tang) and it's kind of like a puffed rice, rice krispy bar without the marshmallows, instead stuck together with a bit of sugar, perhaps a syrup, though it is not as sweet and rice krispy bars!
August 18: I am super blessed to have an amazing host family in Chengdu, who always allow me to stay with them whenever I would like, and we always have a lot of fun when we are together, even as today marks the 1-year anniversary of the day that I ended my host stay with them during training.
Tonight they had some friends over for a potluck style meal, so my host mom and I made a nostalgic (for me) dish: scalloped potatoes. My host mom still has some of the butter and cheese that I gave her, so the dish was particularly tasty. Making these types of dishes is one of my favorite things in China, for it is almost certainly food that many Chinese people have never eaten before: creamy, milky, cheesy ... and potatoes. It's even more fun to watch reactions when they eat it for the first time - usually, it's either love, or hate, straight from the start!
August 17: As today is my last full day in Guizhou, my friend Conrad and I decided to celebrate and spend the evening on a 'sweets quest,' or just a nice walk around the city that is long enough to justify eating whatever sweets we come across.
I found this sweet tonight, which had me hopeful of discovering a great new treat: a western-style puff pastry turnover filled with fruits. Unfortunately, after I bought it, I realized how light it was, which I knew meant it probably wouldn't meet my expectations. I am confident that it wasn't made with butter, but it was light and airy, though the pineapple filling was pretty sparse, probably only a tablespoon of filling in the whole thing!
August 16: The adventure in Guiyang for today was a trip to the 'monkey mountain park' as the nickname goes; and it had quite a few mountains, and monkeys! You'll be able to see more about the mountain in the future as I hopefully write a blog post in the coming week, but here's a look at one of the beautiful shots from the middle of the park.
I also saw a new hobby/sport for the first time that many people were playing in the park: top whipping? I am not sure of the name, but the idea is simple. You spin a top on the ground and then use this whip to keep it spinning as long as you can, with the harsh cracks of the whip echoing throughout the mountains. If you look closely you can see a man practicing this in the picture!
August 15: One of the wonders of Guizhou is that everything is so green. I sent a few pictures today to my host mother in Chengdu, and even she replied, "sooooooo green!"
It's lush, partially due to the fact, I'm sure, that it rains and thunderstorms almost every day. To beat the rain these days, we can often go out for an early walk to the wetland park, or a park along the river, or even through the bamboo forests that are grown right alongside them!
August 14: In many of the grocery stores in China you might find a few foreign products ... particularly in a capital city like Chengdu, Lanzhou or Guiyang.
However, most of the time, the foreign products are incredibly expensive and far outside of my PC budget, because, well, they are foreign imports. Today, however, it was the first time that I've actually found something that was a ridiculous deal: ginger beer.
I've never been a big fan of soda, but this ginger beer is SO good. And it is so cheap, cheaper than a can of beer or soda normally costs. It originally cost ¥20 each, so you can bet that I stocked up on these ¥2 bottles!
August 13: Guizhou has a ton of amazing, new food that I haven't tried before in China, or anywhere for that matter! Another interesting find, food-wise? Pomegranates are grown locally, and are delicious and cheap - a trifecta that I've never seen before in my life, with pomegranates a bit too expensive to ever purchase back in Wisconsin. It was my first time today running across an actual pomegranate tree along the side of the road in the small yard of an apartment building on Conrad's campus!
August 12: I'm off to my next adventure today - a week in Guiyang, Guizhou with one of my best friends here in PC China: Conrad!
I got off to a little bit of a rough start, though I think it was actually fortuitous: I took the wrong bus out of the train station to meet Conrad at their apartment, and I realized this in time to jump off the bus and walk about a mile to the bus stop I was supposed to get off at. Why was it lucky? I had the opportunity to see a bit of the city in a warm, but not hot, day, chancing upon a few new things I hadn't seen before in China: brown sugar baozi, restaurant after restaurant advertising bean hot pot, and the coolest one of the day: outdoor barber shops located along the sidewalks by the main highway through the city. It's just a chair, a mirror and perhaps an umbrella to keep away the sun while the hair magic takes place.
August 11: I had a bit of free time today, and with my host family (particularly my host mom) that free time often turns into opportunities to experiment in the kitchen/teach my host mom how to make new foods. I won't complain about these chances!
Today I taught her how to make tortillas, a vegetarian ground beef substitute made from tofu, pico de gallo, and she had a recipe for scalloped potatoes that we made together. Overall, it took about 4 hours to procure all the ingredients (super fresh!) and make the food, but it was a great time, and the results were extremely tasty and close to what I've made in the USA!
The picture was taken in the vertical frame, so it is going to distort this page a little bit, but I think that it is worth it!
August 10: It's my first full day back in Chengdu, which is the same for many of the new PC trainees who visited their schools for the last week, and are now ready to finishing training this summer, using the information that they have learned at site to plan their first semester of classes.
Upon arriving at my host family's apartment, what was one of the first things they mentioned? "You look like ... you're fatter than before! Get on the scale and see!" meant, of course, in the nicest way, but also reminding me of a pretty interesting scale I saw in Hong Kong: a mechanical scale that prints out a card with your weight. Upon inserting 2 HK dollars (about a quarter), it will drop a card onto press, under which spins a wheel engraved with weight markings corresponding to the weight upon the scale at that moment, and above which is a weighted hammer that lowers to press the marking in to the card. I wish I could have taken a better picture of the machine, but the lights inside were making it difficult to get a better picture!
August 9: On our last full day of vacation, we decided to take a day trip to Macau - another administrative region of China that maintains a special relationship with mainland China, due to its past as a colony of another country. In this case, Macau used to be a part of Portugal, and still displays the influence of this colonial past in food, architecture and the presence of ethnically Portuguese citizens.
We took the ferry over to Macau in the morning and spent the afternoon taking a tour around the small island - our driver took us to see many places in a short amount of time, but this was one of the most interesting sights I saw that was a first for me in China: a church situated atop a hill overlooking both new and old Macau. It is one of the few actual churches I have seen since leaving America last year!
August 8: Hong Kong is also a very colorful city, even beyond the normal displays of signs outside restaurants, or large scale advertisements promising a newer, better phone experience that you see everywhere, both in China and the USA. When you look past these signs, you see the apartment buildings that extend skyward and outward, oftentimes painted and providing a colorful backdrop that echoes the noise emanating from the streets below.
August 7: What is one of the best ways to learn about a place? I think it could be taking a stroll through the open markets, or, if those are not in the immediate area, check out the grocery stores to see what is new, unique, or surprisingly familiar.
And what did I find that was unexpected? I discovered this selection of bratwurst/sausages that looks transported straight from my home in Wisconsin all the way across the ocean: Johnsonville bratwursts, a Wisconsin specialty that I didn't even know they exported!
August 6: What's a great way to spend the cool evenings in Hong Kong after a hot and humid day travelling along the streets? A boat ride in the bay/straight/whatever-you-actually-call-the-body-of-water-separating-the-two-main-land-areas-of-Hong-Kong. It was refreshing, stress-relieving and provided peaceful, incredible views of the busy city at night. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone travelling to Hong Kong - be sure to pick a ride time that begins after the sun has set!
August 5: One of the things that stood out to me most quickly upon arrival was the tram system, 'ding ding' ing its way down the streets carved with tracks and webbed with electrical wires to power the thin double decker boxes that run consistently all day.
I think these might be one of the coolest things I've seen in Hong Kong thus far, a remnant of the transportation system that transformed the island city about a century ago that still continues to provide reliable, quick transportation day in and day out!
August 4: One of the first things that we had to do in Hong Kong is visit the Disneyland, and see just how similar/different it is to the Disneyworld that we know pretty well. As I was walking down Main Street USA for the "first time in a year" (picture to the left), it became clear just how small Disneyland is here.. it really is dwarfed in comparison to the grand size and spread of the Disneyworld in Florida. Many things are the same: rides, shows, character meet-and-greets, overpriced foods ... but even within the similarities differences exist. For example, the Lion King show had a different cast composition, and many of the songs sounded a little ... off.. particularly in the lyrics and melody, as if it was a bit remixed, but I'm definitely not a music expert.
One thing that remained the same? Fun with the family.
August 3: Hong Kong! Family! And an amazing surprise package from my grandma!
Actual loaf pans for making risen bread and nut bread, along with a recipe book to keep me occupied cooking new foods (and keeping homesickness away!), which is exactly what I've been missing. The old aluminum pans were not cutting it for me, but now I'm back in the bread business! Thanks, Grandma!
August 2: It's a big day for the new PCTs! They officially find out their placements today, the school and community where they will be serving for the next two years. Congratulations and good luck with the site visits this weekend for all of the soon-to-be-Volunteers!
It's also a big day for me: the last day in Chengdu before I head to Hong Kong to meet my family for a week! I'm very excited and this afternoon my host mom and I went to the foreign food market store called Metro (a German chain), where my host mother stole a picture of me, and said I looked a 'bit lonely.' Luckily, that will all change in less than 24 hours.
August 1: Back in Chengdu! I'm in Chengdu for two days to start the month, a short layover on my way to Hong Kong to meet my family and travel/explore a new part of China for a week! During my two days here, I'm hanging out with my host family and taking the opportunity to help out with the welcome session for the new Gansu Volunteers from the China 24 cohort, who will be finding out their schools/sites tomorrow morning! Welcome to the family!
Speaking of family, many families in Chengdu have a pets, like cats or dogs. Outside my host family's apartment complex I spotted my first 'dog restaurant' to cater to these families, and well, their pets. Take your dog in, order the steak-shaped meal, or anything else on the fairly long menu, and it's served on a nice plate for your dog to enjoy in the company of any other pampered pooches also stopping by for a quick dinner. It's a first time for me running into this type of shop!
It's called "In Pop."
