Lots Of Yummy Foods

This weekend was a ton of fun! It was probably the least hassled weekend I've had since coming to China and that was a nice change.
Friday Andy and I wandered around Yangzhong all afternoon. We found a cute little coffee shop and Andy got super excited. Apparently he loves alcohol and coffee! He got the largest cup they had and bought me a hot chocolate. It was a fantastic cup of hot chocolate. They just poured Hershey's syrup into a cup of hot milk and it tasted almost American. The coffee shop itself was a cute little shop and Andy and I ended up sitting there for almost two hours just talking. It was very nice.
We were planning on meeting Alyssa and Josh for dinner but the two of them ended up going to Starling's (Orange's son) birthday party that night so Andy and I were on our own. We went to a "Western" style restaurant. It was pretty good but really expensive, not somewhere I'll frequent often. I got Yangzhou fried rice (Don't laugh about me getting rice at a Western style place. They don't have fried rice at all so it was a novelty for me). After dinner Andy and I picked up some cookies from the stall outside the school and watch the Big Bang Theory all night. It sounds pathetic but it was so nice to not have to go go go for one night.
Saturday was a pretty exciting day for me. I was heading over to the office to send an email when I ran into Andy who had a package for me. Exactly one week ago my mom sent me a package with goodies to give to all the nice people that give me gifts all the time. I was completely blown away. I wasn't sure the package was even going to make it let alone in one week! I was super excited though. I was running up to the office to open the package and check to see if everything made it okay when one of the other teachers called out to me and said her daughter wanted to play with me and asked if I would be willing to play. Well of course! Her daughter was probably 3 or 4 and super cute. All Chinese kids are cute! 
We met up with Josh and Alyssa for lunch and got some delicious noodles. Alyssa and I decided to catch a bus that went around Yangzhong just to see where it headed. We found the neat park that Spring and Apple took me to a couple weekends ago and discovered it was really close to Alyssa and Josh's school. So when it finally warms up we will be spending lots of time there.
The four of us were meeting Lily to go to her house for dinner that night. Lily is one of the students at my school. A few weekends ago Josh and I ran around the track with her and she gave me a hair clip. My mom had sent some fun hair clips in her package so I brought one with to give to Lily as a thank you gift. Oh my goodness the food was so delicious! Lily's mom is an excellent cook! She made two different kinds of dumplings. One had pork the other had mushrooms, I think is what Lily told me. There's always a giant bowl of whole shrimp it seems like. Lily's dad came over and popped the whole shrimp in his mouth and then pulled out the parts that we shouldn't eat to show us. It was hilarious. There was also a bowl of green stuff, I kind of thought it looked like grass. I can eat that stuff with rice but not plain so I didn't touch it. Josh ate almost the whole bowl though. There was a bowl of something like BBQ pork and a bowl with fish that stared at us all night long. It was actually very tasty though, once you get over the fish looking at you. The bowl of fish also had bamboo shoots in it and I popped one in my mouth. Just as it got in Lily shouts "Don't eat that!" Well naturally I panicked so I promptly opened my mouth and let the questionable food fall in my bowl of vinegar (That was a surprise to me. The Chinese use lots of vinegar with everything). As it was falling, I thought to myself that this couldn't be a polite thing to do, especially when the vinegar splashed all over the bowl of shrimp. Luckily Lily's parents weren't eating with us and it was a very casual meal so everyone laughed about it. Plus, being a foreigner gives you certain rights. You can get away with lots of things just by being foreigners here. Turns out not only had I picked up a bamboo shoot but a piece of ginger that you use to season the food. Glad I didn't eat it, ginger isn't my favorite thing ever. Lily's mom came over during the meal (Her parents don't speak English) and was watching us eat. Nothing is scarier than having chopstick pros watch people use chopsticks who are less than pros. I feel like I drop more things when they're watching me. Her mom pointed at me and said something in Chinese. I kind of hunkered down ready for my chopstick skills to be attacked but turns out her mom was saying that I am very good with chopsticks. That was an awesome moment in time.

Lily's parents are apparently religious (Lily told us she does not really believe the things her parents do). They had a little shrine in the corner of the flat that had three sort of gods on it. One was for wealth and good fortune, one was for happiness, and the other one I don't remember what it was for. I was looking at them just to check it out. Next thing I knew Lily's dad had lit the candles on the shrine thing and had lit three pieces of incense for me. Lily showed me how to hold the incense and how I was supposed to bow and ask for things. Well I didn't want to be rude so I did the little bowing thing, the whole time thinking to myself about the ten commandments. Alyssa told me after that I went really red in the face. It was an interesting experience but one I don't think I'll take again. Incense smells funny.

After dinner Lily took us out shopping. We went to the grocery store and bought drinks and messed around for a bit. Lily really likes Josh a lot so there was a little bit of flirtation going on there. All the Chinese girls get really excited when they find out that Josh is only 18. His birthday is this month so it will be interesting to see if they react the same to 19.
Sunday night one of the teachers at my school, Cassy, was taking the four of us out to hot pot. When we walked inside we saw a black man at the grill. This was one of those "You know you've been in China too long" moments for me once again because all four of us stared at him in awe. He spoke English and we told him that we were English teachers before we were ushered away to the room where we'd be eating. They turned the heater on for us but then opened the window up really wide. That was a bit of a contradiction, no? Needless to say the room did not warm up. There were two tables in the room and another family came in later to eat and ended up shutting the window. Thank heavens!
We started hot pot with something called dry pot. I'd had this before but I thought she'd called it cold pot. Dry pot makes so much more sense than cold pot. It had chicken wings in it and lots of various vegetables. Since there was an Indian at the grill the food was quite spicy. The chicken wings were amazing! After we finished up the wings they poured water right into the bowl which meant our entire hot pot was fairly spicy. It wasn't anything too terribly spicy so it was okay. We had lots of vegetables and many of them we don't have in America. We also had lots of kinds of meat. Beef, sausage and my favorite this bacony stuff. It's not like bacon in America (Which I was a little sad about even though this was delicious) it was really thick and was almost more like ham...It might have been ham and she just translated it to bacon I don't know. Cassy's daughter joined us for dinner, she is a first year university student in Yangzhou. She was very nice and fun to talk to. She sang us her favorite American song and it sounded familiar but I'm not sure what it was. She invited us to visit her sometime in April when it is warmer. We wanted to go to Yangzhou because it's supposed to be really pretty there so that should be fun!
I had a fantastic relaxing weekend filled with good food! One of the best things about China is the food. I hope I can eat at Chinese restaurants in America because they are so very different from actual Chinese food.