Thank You for Korean People

Last semester, there was a Korean couple in our class that we got to know. They are no longer in our class, but we still get the opportunity to talk with them. Two weeks ago, they stopped Alvin at school and gave us a gift. Kimchee! They heard about our kimchee disaster, and so they wanted to get us good kimchee.

They actually ended up giving us kimchee jjigae (kimchee soup) and just regular kimchee. We also made plans to go try out a Korean restaurant that is located near our downtown.

I have a friend who, when he blesses the food, he will sometimes bless the ethnicity of where the food is from (ie. if the the food is from Mexico, he will say, "Thank you for Mexican people.) When I ate the kimchee soup and kimchee, my first response was, "Wow, thank you for Korean people. Literally!"

Kimchee Jjigae


Kimchee (put in another container)

Making Homemade Baozi (Buns)

I have been learning how to cook better local Chinese foods from my friends. I have learned how to make two cool dishes, lamb dishes, dumplings, and a couple of stir fry dishes. The other day, I learned how to make baozi (buns). I made them with my friend, and they were huge looking. Two days later, I made them at my house, and although they looked good and tasted decent, they are half the size of what my friend made.

Inside the baozi is ground beef, napa, green onions, ginger, garlic, hot peppers, and some spices.

Here is my baozi before getting steamed:


Here is one after it was steamed:

Chinese Volleyball Team

I recently joined a volleyball team. Well, it's more like a volleyball club - maybe about 10-15 people who get together every Sunday afternoon to play volleyball. But a handful of us (including me) are slowly making preparations to form a team to play in a league (at least, from my limited Chinese, that's how I understand it... I think).

We began practices last week. It's not just... get together and play some volleyball. Our first 90 minutes are spent running lines and doing blocking drills and digging drills and getting penalized with pushups or kangaroos if you make a bad pass.

I am now on the other side of 30, and almost all of the other guys playing are college students. From their physical education classes or from teams they've been on recently, they are used to practices being like this. It has been a long time since I was on a competitive league team; I have forgotten what it was like to be in drills and do cross training. It's good, but I'm worn out.

House of Cardboard

And here is my birthday house. You can see the photos of my friends in the yard. One of them is sitting at a table waiting for me to have tea with her, one of them is petting the pet goat outside, one of them is dancing, etc.

Right now, the house is still at my local friends' house. I am letting them babysit it for a while.

Nitrogenous Fertilizer Factory

That is the name... of a bus stop. I found myself standing under this sign the other day, where I was waiting to transfer from one bus to another. At first, I was happy to have my new Palm so that I could just snap a quick picture of this interesting bus stop name. But then, it got me thinking about how bus stops here are named differently than they are named in the States.

In the States (at least in my experience), bus stops are usually named according to the intersection of streets. So, for example... if you're on a DART bus riding the #452 in Plano, you might get off at Parker and Alma (there's a Starbucks there, by the way). If you were in Santa Monica, riding the Big Blue Bus Line #2, you have a stop at Wilshire and 26th (yes - there is a Starbucks here as well).

Even in Vancouver, Canada, route #5 will stop at Robson and Thurlow (special bonus... there are 2 Starbucks at this intersection, diagonal from each other).

But... here in our fair city, only a few bus stops are named after the intersection where they're situated. The better part of bus stops are named after the building or buildings that are nearest to it. And so, we get cool names like the one I encountered on Sunday.

Passengers, please be willing to give up your seat to the elderly, the disabled, pregnant women, and those holding small children. Please do not smoke or spit on the bus. Next stop, the Nitrogenous Fertilizer Factory.

Birthday Gifts

I had a fun birthday with friends and family, and I felt very grateful for the gifts that my friends gave me. Yes, some of them very very thoughtful, yet some of them were, well... different.

Here is a list:
Tiger balloon (it is still alive after a week and a day)



Monstrosity of Roses




Cheese cake



Decorated bike (with balloons, fake flowers, and a stuffed bear)
A paper house
A huge handmade stuffed dog
A stuffed animal tiger
A Chinese hand fan
Notebook



Packages from the states (Thanks so much spline and stefstuf for sending them out):
Girl Scout cookies
Salt and vinegar chips
Magazines/Books
Ribbon
Candy/Snacks
Clothes

Fun Birthday

Thank you for all the birthday wishes and for those who were able to celebrate with me.

Here is a brief breakdown of what went down on the day of my birthday.

Some friends surprised me by decorating my bike with a garland of fake flowers, four balloons, and a stuffed bear. It was hard to ride home with the balloons blowing and the flowers falling off; I got a lot of stares.



In the afternoon, some local friends surprised me by arranging some friends to bring me into an "empty" classroom. In this empty classroom I saw a paper house (about 11x5x8) with a cutout pictures of some local friends pasted in the front yard. Under the house is a tablecloth with Christmas lights around it and cut out flowers on top of the tablecloth. I didn't think anything of the arrangement at first, I thought it was just something that was part of the classroom. I remember thinking to myself, "hmmm, that is weird. Oh well, I guess Chinese classrooms are just different." At that time, a group of my local friends, who were hiding in a back room, surprised me. We ended up having cake and snacks.

Later that afternoon, I went to visit a teacher, and she found out it was my birthday. So immediately she grabbed a huge handmade stuffed dog out of her closet (see bike picture for a glimpse of the dog). The button eyes were a little crooked and honestly it looks like a piñata. She told me it was a birthday present. I tried to refuse, well not out of politeness, but more out of fear of what I am going to do with a scary huge dog, but she persisted. The teacher in the next office also gave me a wooden fan.

When I got home, Alvin already chopped and separated all the ingredients for our Thai inspired dinner. All I needed to do was cook it.


Unfortunately, we couldn't find some of the ingredients for the Thai food including lemongrass, Thai basil (or even basil), galangal, fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves. We were able to find coconut milk and Thai chillis, although Alvin kept saying that the coconut milk was too watery and tasted like pool water. We made Tom Kha Ghai, Pad Thai (which tasted like Chinese noodles stir-fried), and mango sticky rice. I thought it was pretty good tasting, but as for it being authentically Thai, it was far from it.

Tom Kha Ghai


Pad Thai


Mango Sticky Rice


All in all it was a wonderful day.