Tuesday, June 3
Photos: Adventures at 老门东!
This morning was a real struggle. My host sister had to be at school at 7:30am. I had originally planned to leave with my host sister, but both my host mom and I decided it would be better for me to get a bit more sleep after waking up at 6am. Unfortunately, I woke up at 8:06 am, since I forgot to set an alarm for 7am; I had to be at my internship at 8:30am. I quickly got ready, but then I saw breakfast laid out especially for me, so I felt obligated to eat it. On the dining table, there was 酒酿元宵 (jiu niang yuan xiao) and unsweetened soymilk. I fell in love with the 酒酿元宵; it was sweet, but not too sweet—perfect for breakfast. I wish I had had more time to enjoy it.
Today was the first day of internship and I was 45 minutes late. In the United States, that would have been terrible. And it still is terrible that I was late on the first day, but my supervisor, Ms. Yin Jun, was extremely nice about it. For most of my work today, I helped edit the English on the website for the Institute for International Students at Nanjing University.
Working in China appears to be more flexible than I expected. My lunch break was three hours long, so I headed to Café Belong, which I've wanted to go to while taking classes, to enjoy some coffee and to read some of my book. After an hour or so, I returned to Zeng Xianzi and chatted with Molly and Mika. I feel like I haven't seen anyone on our dialogue forever, but it has only actually been a day (lol). We caught each other up on stories with our host families and other things we were excited to do in the upcoming week and in Shanghai. After leaving Zeng Xianzi, I ran into Jon and Tim sipping some coffee at Momentum. That was another catching up talk in itself.
I took the 83 bus and transferred to the 43 bus, successfully without taking the wrong bus and getting lost this time. Shortly after I arrived back at my host family's home, my host mom, my host sister and I took the 43 bus further to get to 老门东 (lao men dong). I love it there. The area was full of traditional-style Chinese architecture. There were many little shops that sold delicious 小吃 (xiao chi), so we literally went from shop to shop, eating every type of food.
First, we had 豆腐脑 (dou fu nao), also known as 豆腐花 (dou fu hua). The sweet kind was one of my favorite desserts, even back in the States and I was first introduced to the salty kind, which is also great by the way, this time in China. Next, we moved onto soup dumplings and duck blood and other internal organs with vermicelli in soup (I know it sounds gross, but it is so good!). The soup dumplings, with some vinegar and chili as the dipping sauce, were honestly the best I've ever had in my life. I had passed by someone eating scallion pancake and I immediately wanted it when I saw the shop selling it. Sadly, it wasn't what I wanted; the pancake was hard. I like to think that my dad makes it a lot better, but my host mom told me that she'll make me the softer kind with wontons tomorrow for breakfast, so I'm excited for that ^__^. After venturing into a few shops that sold souvenirs, we stopped by another shop for a drink: I had watermelon slush to cool off my "internal fire." Finally, the last food of the night was from a stand just outside老门东 (lao men dong): stinky tofu. It was yummy and much better than the one I had at Xinjiekou during Mystery Nanjing. Man, I love food.
I hope to have more adventures like this. Goodnight J
- Judy
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