Dinner with Chinese Friends :)

On Thursday, I went to my Chinese class and then bought some lunch to go, which was right next to the school. Six of us had to go to get our resident permission for our visas, so we decided to get some food and eat it at the school.

Gloria, Christie and Scott eating

My food (noodles, meat-I think beef, and vegetables)


It was almost impossible to get a taxi, but we finally did. Our taxi driver was insane though because he was driving into oncoming traffic and Kailey, who sat in the front, almost had a heart attack. But we made it to the visa place in one piece, thankfully. We had to wait for our turn at the visa place and once we all went, we returned to school because some of us had Tai Chi. Again, I decided to join the class just to check it out. It was pretty cool. The instructor is an older gentleman, but is extremely fit for his age. His assistant was a little intimidating though. She was very serious once the class started and was very persistent in correcting our moves. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the class. And apparently on Monday we get to purchase our own Tai Chi suits, which I am so excited about! Once that was over, my roommates and I headed back home and purchased some desserts and drinks because we had been invited over to our Chinese friends' apartment for dinner. Immediately after we arrived at the apartment, our Chinese friends knocked on our door to make sure that we were coming over. We were just getting ready to leave, so we joined them as they had to go to the market to buy food. The market we went to was amazing. They had so many different kinds of food, such as vegetables, fruits, noodles, dumplings, eggs, candy, all kinds of meat (including pig snout and tail, chicken claws, and stomach), etc.

The market:


Vegetables




Our Dinner Group: (from left to right) Kevin, Marit (who's hidden by Kevin), Narry, Li, and Pu Ge


Pu Ge


Meat





Fruit
Noodles, dumplings, eggs



Preserved food



After buying all this food, the six of us went back to Narry's, Li's and Pu Ge's apartment. They then began cooking as I watched and talked to them. It was so fun and interesting because Narry and Li speak very good English, but Pu Ge doesn't know very much English. So when we were speaking, we (especially Narry) would have to translate everything into Chinese for Pu Ge.

The food that mainly Pu Ge prepared (he knows how to cook the most out of the three of them)



Pork and spicy potatoes


Egg and tomato soup

Vegetable and beef on the left and pig skin, tofu, and vegetable on the right.


Getting everything ready


Everyone was starving by this point and everything smelled and looked delicious



After eating, we played Fight Against Landlord, a Chinese card game, which is pretty fun. After learning and playing a couple of times, we had dessert and then talked for a couple of hours about the earthquake that happened last year in Narry's hometown. His parents' house wasn't affected, luckily. But he showed me some pictures that his brother took that just showed the massive destruction of most of the buildings. It's really quite sad. We also discussed gun violence between China and the U.S. and how much safer it is in China because most people don't own guns. Even most of the police don't have bullets in their guns. And if they do have to use their guns, they first fire into the air three times to warn the people instead of directly shooting into a crowd. It was very interesting to talk to the three of them and learn more about their culture.