Other than that, not much has been going on. Go figure that the day I plan to have a wonderful picnic in the park, it rains. Not only that, but it is supposed to rain heavily for at least a week. Welcome to monsoon season. The good news about all the rain, though, is that it not only keeps the temperature down, but it also keeps the mosquitoes at bay. I think I can sacrifice a picnic for that.
Here's what I had instead. I went to MX restaurant at the Train Station. The MX actually stands for "Mei Xin," which is "Beautiful Heart." Perhaps that's not the most appetizing name for a restaurant, but the food there is some of the better available options. This is my yummy lunch of "Shredded Chicken & Vegetable Noodle Soup with Bao Zi." The bao zi is the bun on the far-left. Oh, and my meal came with a free Coke Zero.
The rest of the day, it rained and rained so I stayed indoors. I got the urge to draw so I thought of interesting-looking famous people. I settled on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of my favorite authors, because I'm currently reading "Love in the Time of Cholera" and I saw his picture on the back cover. Once I laid eyes on his (how can I say this?) mesmerizing eyebrows, the deal was sealed. I have not taken a picture of it yet, but I now have a portrait of an aloof-looking Colombian man with black bushy eyebrows at my desk. At last, something to look at! I'll be sure to take a picture, but I might wait until I have more portraits done.
For dinner, I finished up the last of the tortellini soup. I thought I ought to take a picture of my first cooking success in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it is not a very good picture, but it still looks delicious and smelled divine. Tasted pretty good too.
Yesterday I was so tired I made sure to sleep well last night, and I'm so glad I did! I felt so well-rested today. I have also decided since I've been here that, in my natural state, I am indeed a morning person. At home, I stayed up late a lot to hang out with my favorite vampire, but I really prefer to make an early night of it and get up at dawn. Sadly, I think I'm the only person on my hall who feels this way. It's all right, though, because I can just kick people out of my room at 10:30pm or so and go to bed. Then I set the alarm for 8:00am, although I normally wake up closer to 7:00-7:30am. Once I'm up, I'm up and it takes me, oh, 15 minutes max to get ready. If I'm not in a rush to get to class (and that early I never am), I usually pack my breakfast and walk to class, which takes around 25 minutes since I walk slowly and take the scenic route. When I get to the classroom building, I find a comfortable place to sit and read while I eat my breakfast. I've been experimenting with what I bring to eat since whatever it is has to last me until 1:00-1:30pm, but I don't like to eat a heavy breakfast most days. Also, as much as I love eggs, they are high in cholesterol so I shouldn't eat as many of them as I'd like to. I've been eating a granola bar and a piece of fruit in the mornings, but sometimes I get hungry about an hour before lunch. Therefore, as an experiment, I have invested in a single-serving carton of sweet silken tofu, which seems similar to yogurt but with more protein. I haven't tried it yet, but tomorrow morning I plan to subsist on it, a banana, and a bottle of tea. We'll see.
So anyway, morning class went well, but nothing special happened. Monday we have our first test so I'm kind of excited. We do a listening test first, which takes about an hour, and then we do a reading test, which also takes about an hour. After that, we can leave until our individual appointments for the one-on-one oral exam. My appointment is at 2:30pm so I have plenty of time in-between. We're now covering the 5th chapter before the test so it'll be neat to have that first milestone behind us.
After morning class, I went to Ben Frank's because where else can you get this meal for the equivalent of US$4.20? And, actually, that's kind of expensive for that canteen. I'm getting really stingy with how much I spend on food because everything looks much more expensive than it really is. There's a place that sells food around HK$50, and I haven't eaten there yet because it looks too expensive. The food there looks amazing though so I ought to go eventually. Anyway, this is my lunch from today. I got "Japanese Beef & Mushroom with Rice." It was pretty much beef, onion, carrot, mushroom, cabbage, watercress, and rice with something like teriyaki sauce. It was pretty good, and it came with cold lemon honey tea, which is actually better hot so I didn't drink much of it. All in all, I might order it again, but some of the other Japanese food looks better.
Between finishing lunch and going to my afternoon class, I managed to get most of my homework done. Yay me, right? We wrapped up the afternoon class with an debate about the pros and cons of watching a lot of sports games. Girls vs. Guys, and you can guess who took which side. Girls won, of course, because Rachel and I always beat Javier and Cameron when we do contests in class. After class, I tried to do the Listening Assignment for Lesson 5, and my CD misbehaved even worse than on Saturday. I ended up just using Javi's, which worked for some reason, and the homework itself was not bad. Han Laoshi is aware of our technical difficulties, though, and she's working on putting the files online.
With homework out of the way, I went to grab dinner and hit the Park 'n' Shop. For dinner, I had something I saw Kelso eat before and it both looked and smelled really good. She also raved about how tasty it was so I was curious. This is "Thai-Style Pork Neck Rice." It was, indeed, quite delicious, but I think I would enjoy it a bit more if rice wasn't an everyday thing for me. Oddly enough, I think I have grown to appreciate rice much more than I did before, but I wish about half of that pork were replaced with broccoli or spinach or something else green and yummy. I really like the cabbage here, but I want more veggies than they've been giving me.
Once I finished up dinner, I ran into the Park 'n' Shop to grab some odds and ends. I know I can't really stay out of that place, but it's right there on campus so there's no need to stockpile groceries. I much prefer to buy what I want/need when I want/need it. Case in point: two days ago I ran out of cashews. Today I bought a 21 oz container of unsalted whole roasted cashews, and am completely ecstatic. While there, I also picked up some Lipton tea-bags. I have two water bottles I've been reusing so I just put one teabag in each, sprinkled a little Splenda, and filled them up with water. They are now steeping overnight in the fridge so I can have sweet tea tomorrow. Heck yes. I also picked up a few fuji apples and some important supplies related to the end of 3-month medical cycle. By the way, I was absolutely fabulous with my nifty Park 'n' Shop Eco-bag. Man, I love Hong Kong.
I also really love the teachers here. Han Laoshi is amazing. Just an hour ago (yes, at 10:00pm) she randomly showed up at our dorm--on our hall even--and she came bearing gifts. She had an enormous plastic bag with take-away plates in it and she promptly handed it to me because, she said, she knew I was the one who liked to cook. When I looked through it later, I realized that she had given me the ingredients to make Chinese hot-pot for everybody. Wow, talk about study-snacks. I'll need to ask everyone when they want to eat the hot-pot so I'll know what night to cook it. I'm amazed at how much the teachers here really care about the students. It kind of reminds me of GSSM without feeling like an academic pressure-cooker.
Hot-pot, though delicious, is not the only cooking endeavor I intend to pursue this weekend. I am planning to go back to City Super in Sha Tin on Friday afternoon to buy a few more supplies. I've been craving my veggies so I've had my mouth set on Ratatouille for a while. Justin, Chris, and a few other people have been expressing a strong interest in my cooking for a little over a week now and I think that in a few days we will have reached an official agreement. Pretty soon, I think I'll be looking at a situation similar to my 6 weeks of research at Clemson. However, there would be a few changes. (1) I don't cook every night--just one or two nights a week--although that is subject to change, and (2) I eat for free. The people who have been wanting my food have offered to cover all the grocery costs so long as I keep track of them. My dinner would be the price of my labor. Sounds like a good deal to me. Still, I don't know just how many people want me to cook so I'm trying to get a feel for it. With the Ratatouille, a big batch makes 8 rather large servings. Justin suggested that I pin a sign-up sheet on my door with 7 slots, and an explanation of how the grocery bill will be split as well as the date of the meal. I think it's a good idea so I will probably implement that tomorrow.
That's really all for now, but maybe I can update tomorrow when I come back from the Fo Tan branch of the Hong Kong Immigration Department. I have to apply for my Hong Kong Identity Card.
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