Teaching doesn't start until Friday.
Photos: Around luoyang has been updated and Shopping in Luoyang has been added.
Shopping in Luoyang is a pretty familiar experience. And when I say that, I mean that I did my shopping in the friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart down our street. I've never been a fan of supporting slave labor regardless of what country I'm in, but because shopping in Wal-Mart is such a familiar experience for pretty much everyone that I know, I decided I'd give it a shot this once.
Shopping in Wal-Mart is pretty much just like shopping in Wally World in the united states with a couple key differences. There's an enormous tea section [which isn't suprising] and the majority of the meat is just place out on tables raw in the middle of the aisles. There are some familiar American goods for sale - Lays, some beers, popular toothpastes, and snacks... however in general, most things are catered toward it's majority Chinese clientele. I pretty much bought anything that I'd eaten before or could see myself eating and got two stuffed bags of groceries for about ¥127 [or slightly under $20]. I didn't want to branch out too much because I only had like, 2 bags of milk, a watermelon, and some apples at home. Buying food I didn't end up liking wasn't really an option.
I did buy 1 can of about every beer that I saw sitting in the center aisle - this amounted to about 5 beers. The orange beer, which I found most intriguing, wasn't actually beer at all. If it was, it was a joke. It was so watered down with sugar that I could barely taste orange, much less the alcohol. Now I'm enjoying a Tsingtao, which I love every bit as much here as I did back in the states. I'm planning on going to carrefour [french grocery chain like wal-mart] tomorrow to see if I can pick up some more groceries and kitchenware. I bought a whole bunch of ramen when I was at Wal-Mart and when I got home I realized I didn't have any bowls that were big enough to hold a single pouch of noodles. I also need something to organize my kitchen utensils, because right now they're just kinda sitting on the top of my microwave. I also need a cooking thermometer.
I've got a week off coming up [next week] and I'm trying to decide where I want to go. I don't really want to leave the country because if I do I risk possibly being quarantined on the way back in. I was thinking maybe going to Xi'an [西安] and checking out the terracota warriors or visiting my friend Ken in Beijing. I've also considered going to Kashgar or Tibet, but I'm trying to decide if I really want to spend that kind of money right now. I'm not going to be getting paid for another month or so, so I should probably save as much as I can until I get to that point. However, it's not often I'm going to be getting a week off, so traveling further might make more sense.
Yesterday was Tim's birthday. We went out to what I thought was going to be a pulled pork sandwich place that people had gone to a couple times before... but plans must have changed at some point along the way because where we did end up going to was this restaurant that was somewhere out in the sticks. It was really busy, so I wasn't really worried that the food wasn't going to be sanitary, but what they served there was odd. Lamb liver on a stick and hot pot was our first course. The lamb liver tasted like a cross between chicken and beef. We then ate some tendons, which were incredibly tough and had no real flavor. Then they served this grilled bread with chili powder and onions on the middle and that was AMAZING. We ended up ordering many more dishes of that. However, I drew the line when they served us Lamb eyes. I'm not one to not try new things, but I draw the line at eyes, brains, and reproductive organs. Had they not told me what it was, I probably would have eaten it. I wasn't alone in my strong stand.
We spend the rest of the night at the restaurant drinking local beer and eating amazing spiced bread. We decided to head back to Mike's apartment late for chipwiches [cookies with ice cream in the center] and to play a little Wii. I grabbed a cab back home early that night because I was tired from only getting four hours of sleep each night since I'd arrived. When I got home I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept for nearly 12 straight hours.
I'm finally starting to get rid of some of this jet lag.
