1. You can buy apples in China that have a Chinese character branded on them. I can't figure out how they do it - the design is not carved or skinned but it seems to be chemically bleached off. Hmm. Qin Chen said that the characters mean things like "happiness", "fortune", and "wealth" etc. and that families buy the apples and arrange them in proper phrases for show in their house.
2. While on the BRT (Changzhou's rapid transit bus system) on the way with Daniel and Sean to a large supermarket, we saw a father pick his small child up out of his seat and take him to a corner of the bus so that he could relieve himself. The rest of the people did not seem that surprised but they did not seem particularly pleased either. Daniel, Sean and I looked at each other as if to say, 'welcome to China'. To his credit, afterward the father proceeded to the front of the bus where he got a mop and cleaned up the puddle.
3. Pizza Hut is a fancy restaurant here. The other Saturday, Sean and I wanted some pizza but the line outside the new restaurant was ridiculous. The server told us we would have to wait 40 minutes. We opted to come back later for dinner. You can get delicious (and very creatively topped) pizzas here but you can also get elaborate dishes, desserts, drinks, appetizers and wines. Last night we had the New Orleans pizza with an appetizer of waffle fries on a dinner date with Qin Chen. It was pretty classy - especially the waffle fries and the two pitchers of Pepsi that we consumed.
4. My favorite student names that I have this semester are: Clove, Yoyo, Imrahil, Loco, Faramir, Lotus, Kiko, Meshel, Kerena, Aflin, Vera, Hermany, Cello and Dream. Since I was so terrible at memorizing names last semester, this year I took a picture of each student holding a paper of what they want to be called so I can study and try and learn them. We'll see how effective this really is - at least they had a blast getting their pictures taken.
5. If you buy a pineapple at the store, they will offer to cut it for you in a special way that can be seen everywhere where pineapple is sold on the street. After cutting the skin off, they use a special grooved tool to cut the deeper spots out which creates a series of spiral rings. The effect is kind of stunning and saves that extra little bit of pineapple that I previously chose to carelessly lop off.
6. For St. Patrick's day, Sean cooked up an "Irish" breakfast lunch that included bacon, hash browns, eggs, baked beans, fruit salad and coffee. It was awesome. I did his dishes.
7. Sean doesn't have any classes on Mondays and he came over today because we were going to work on his lesson plan for tomorrow. It's too bad that the couches here aren't made for tall people. This is what he ended up doing instead:
8. Tonight we decided to make dinner together and whipped up some chicken salads with garlic toast and wine. Chinese people don't really like eating raw vegetables and because of that it can be hard to find salads readily available anywhere. This one tasted great! I didn't have any clean forks so I decided to eat mine with chopsticks. Everything was going fine until I got to the cherry tomatoes. . .
I was amazed when I saw this too, but my grocery store was a bit sloppy. The farmers put stickers on the fruit with transparent and opaque patterns. The part of the fruit that does not get sunlight stays yellow. The part of the fruit that receives sunlight turns red:-)