Monday, May 25, 2009

Tea Time

Since being blocked from blogger.com I haven't felt inspired to revisit since it's such a process to login to my free proxy that has tons of pop up advertising and slows down my system. But alas, here I am..

BIG THANKS to my great friend Jen Lee for making some adjustments to my layout. Now it's more photo friendly.

So, China..

Slowly slowly my knowledge of what is going on around me is increasing. I knew it would eventually get easier but the 'when' was the question. Thanks to some great people for help along the way, Mike C. in particular. Thanks to you I've got my ass on the bus and toured around town. I've found mostly all the food I prefer to eat, restaurants are constantly being added to the list, massage parlours, hair salons, bars.

I spent the weekend in Shenzhen and was surprised to find a Walmart. Naturally I wanted to visit and in the end I bought only one thing, potting soil for my soon to be herb planter garden. It convinced me that with all that I could get at Walmart, I didn't need anything.. which was a settling feeling for me.

My neighbor and friend Cassandra has a little 15 mth old boy with blond curls. He attracts tons of attention and thanks to Joshua she was approached by a woman who leads a foreign women's club who meets once a twice a month for lunch and discussion and twice a month for an activity.
The club consists of only 8-10 women at the moment but all with a story to share, and, very useful information!

On my very first meeting we visited a tea shop and had my first tea ceremony. I won't go into details since the girl who was speaking had everything translated and it was a bit hard to follow. I am waiting on the email that will soon be sent to all of us summarizing the day.


Click it to see it large size.





Also thanks to the meeting I discovered JUSCO!! It's great to find food that I actually like to eat! Great finds of the week: avocados, mozzarella cheese and pears.

I should mention that I found an English printed Chinese cookbook. So I also invested in some soy sauce, rice vinigar and sesame oil. Soon, photos of my attempts at Chinese food! Stay tuned.

:D

2 comments:

jlee said...

sounds and looks like you're having so much fun. I love finding those little pieces of home in other countries (aka walmart). too bad about those pop up windows and ads... but keep updating ;) :D I look forward to hearing about you mastering the art of chinese cooking.

T said...

easier said than done. with the recent anniversary of june 4, my internet using the proxy is snail's speed slow...
oh the frustration of a slow internet. i'll do my best.