Too Much English, Perhaps?

Recently, Bethany and I have been spending some of our Saturday afternoons at the city library, just to study and be in a nice study environment. In recent weeks, my Database Class professor has been coming too, to bring her 6-year old daughter to see me in order to practice English. This has been alright - it was something that I agreed to do. It gives Bethany about an hour of time to chat with my professor, which is great language practice for her. And my professor's daughter is totally adorable and smart.

This last Saturday, it turns out my professor was also babysitting a 6-year classmate of her daughter, a boy who has very little interest in learning English but has tons of interest in cars. So, this boy came along too for the English lesson. After about an hour of working through English together - me and these two 6-year olds - we called it a day.

The boy ran to the magazine racks to get magazines about cars, and then he came back to talk to me nonstop about this or that car... all in Chinese. I couldn't understand a lot of what he said.

My professor said to him (in Chinese), "Shao Ge, you have to speak slower to uncle when you are talking to him. Uncle doesn't understand all of the Chinese that you are speaking."

The boy looked at me curiously, and then looked back at my professor. "Is that because he spent too much time learning English?"

Yes, Shao Ge, you nailed it. That's exactly it.

Romanian Dinner

Did you know that the 1st of March is the traditional celebration of the beginning of the spring in Romania? The holiday is called Martisor. On that day, our Romanian friends took over a local restaurant and hosted a Romanian dinner for a fair price.

It was my first time having Romanian food, and it was delicious. Unfortunately, we forget to take pictures, but to find pictures and more about the dishes, check out this page.

First, Alvin and I shared a soup called "bors." It tasted like a hearty chicken, vegetable soup.

Second, we had "sarmale." This is cabbage rolls with meat inside served with sour cream, hot pepper, and bread or polenta.

For dessert, our table was presented with "prajitura," a plate of about 8 different desserts. All of them were very good.

Pasta with Tomatoes

One of our friends, when his wife was feeling nauseous around the first trimester, asked me to write up some recipes that he could cook for his wife. I handed him three simple recipes, and then one day we cooked together for his wife and Alvin. Many of the recipes do not include meat because the wife was feeling sick at the smell/taste of meat at that time.

The first menu was pasta with tomatoes and a side of roasted carrots. The pasta with tomatoes was a recipe given to me by my sister-in-law MSolari (but I did tweak it a little).

Pasta with tomatoes
Serves 4
Ingredients:
½ package of pasta
3 tomatoes, diced
1 teaspoon dried basil (or 1 T of fresh basil)
8 oz. mozzarella, diced (about a handful)
2 T olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
5 drops of lemon juice

Directions:
1) Boil pasta for 10-15 minutes, until pasta is soft. Remove and place pasta in strainer.
2) While pasta is boiling, sauté garlic in oil until garlic is soft but not burned.
3) Pour oil and garlic over pasta.
4) Add tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, and lemon juice. Stir.
5) Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Optional meat: Chicken chunks
2 chicken breast
¼ teaspoon olive oil

1) Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper over chicken.
2) Drizzle 1 teaspoon of olive oil over chicken.
3) Bake for 15 minutes in oven at 176 C (350 F)
4) Remove, let sit for 5 minutes.
5) Cut chicken in large chunks, and add to pasta



Roasted carrots
Serves 4
Ingredients:
4 carrots, cut in ¼ inch rounds
2 T of olive oil

Directions:
1) Put carrots in oven safe pan.
2) Preheat oven to 200 C (400 F).
3) Drizzle olive oil over the carrots.
4) Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper over carrots.
5) Bake for 20 minutes, or until tender. Halfway through the baking, mix up the carrots to prevent burning.

My Chinese TV Pet Peeve

When I am watching Chinese tv, I like watching foreigners come on the tv and speak Chinese. Some foreigners are very good in their Chinese; some of them even sound like native speakers. My least favorite part of tv is when a foreigner comes on to a Chinese game show, and the host decides to speak to them in "foreigner Chinese." Basically, the host is mocking the way foreigners speak Chinese by messing up the tones completely. I don't like this because often times the foreigner on television actually is pretty good with his/her tones, but secondly, I can't understand anything the host is saying. Yet, the host speaks "foreigner Chinese" to the foreigner thinking that he/she can now understand him better because he is speaking like them. It doesn't work because Chinese is a tonal language. If you mess up the tones, the foreigner has no idea what you are saying, and then he/she looks stupid.

I had this happen to me in real life too. I went to buy a bag, and the sales person used "foreigner Chinese" with me.

After this pet peeve started growing, I have been trying to convince Alvin not to do accents anymore, esp. accents that make fun of the way non-American speak English. For example, Alvin likes to speak to our Australian friend in "Australian English," and to our Cantonese friend, he speaks to him in "Cantonese English." In my opinion, it is the same thing. Alvin argues that it isn't the same thing because English is not a tonal language.

By the way, we have an Australian friend who does a very good American English impression. We also heard about a former French classmate who did an impression of American English by dropping the F-bomb a couple times. Interesting what our international friends think about us.

Pot Pie

Last month, I had an urge to make a chicken pot pie. Here is what it looks like:
Alvin can comments on what it tasted like.

Winter Clothes

Spring is coming. Last week the weather was warm, but the last few days the temperature dropped again. It is now around 50-65 degrees F during the day time. We are just itching to put away the winter clothes, but today I brought out my gloves, and Alvin wore his hat.

We noticed that in this city, the order of what winter clothes to wear is different from Alvin and my thinking.

We think:
Even if it is slightly cold, we wear jacket and boots.
If it is cold, the most important is gloves and long underwear.
If it is medium cold, then wear a hat.
If it is below freezing, then wear a scarf.
And when the lake has frozen over, put on the face mask.

Our locals friends here think:
If it is slightly cold, they wear boots and a light jacket.
If it is cold, face mask.
If it is medium cold, they wear gloves.
When everything has frozen, they finally break out the big jackets and long underwear. Some people wear hats. Yet we hardly ever see hats, and scarves are rare.

What Alvin and I don't understand is how their ears don't feel frozen. I think they know we are foreigners by our hats and scarves.

Kimchi Again!

This semester, we are in class with one of our Korean friends. She is an excellent cook, although she still laments how the last meal she cooked us (a year ago) was too salty.

She gifted us with a jar of homemade kimchi. Of all the kimchi we have received, this one has been the best.


In one weekend, we ate half the jar. We made bibimbop one day:


The next day, we made kimchi tacos.


Just yesterday, we had kimchi fried rice. Yummy!