Adventures in Laundry and Food stuffs.

Can you tell that I'm bad with titles? In fact, when I submitted my thesis to the grad schools several years ago, the only thing my committee asked me to change was the title...

Today was largely a bland day, which was  nice.  I'm still dealing with jet lag, though I can tell that it is getting  better.  I think I'm just getting old...I've never had jet lag this badly before! 

There is definitely some homesickness.  Not the crippling type of "I need to come home right now because I'm crying myself to sleep" but more of the "Wow, I'm here all alone without any of the comforts of home and I feel out of place".  It's a sort of dull homesickness like I haven't felt before, but I am enjoying myself, and I've met some nice coworkers, which is great.

However, there were two highlights of my day. Yay!

Laundry:

I figured out how to do  laundry! Yeah, I know that sounds silly.  But, seriously, it was an undertaking.  Doing laundry here involves moving the washer to right outside of the bathroom, plugging in the power, hooking up the water valve, and making sure the drainage hose is draining into the bathroom (in case you were wondering, the bathroom is essentially a shower with a toilet and sink in it).  On this note, I also managed to find laundry detergent, something I was nervous about because bottles of detergent look an awfully lot like other cleaners.

So, now I have some clean clothes drying in various places.  It's nice.  They smell good. xD

Food Stuffs:

I had a lovely chocolate and almond bread today, but it was dinner that was  OMFG to die for.

Clark and I decided we wanted to try one of  the BBQ places near us, and when we met up he told me about one he passed called MeowMeow. Needless to say, I  didn't  have to think twice.

So, MeowMeow was this amazingly cat and art themed place.  For instance, on the menu there was a cat face in a portrait of "The Girl With the  Pearl Earring" and "Starry Starry"night was painted on the wall.  And, there were these really pretty metal cats everywhere!

We had a bit of a kerfuffle when we first got there because neither of us speak the language so we weren't sure what the hostess was saying, but we eventually got seated.  

Something I've noticed about menus here, which I greatly appreciate, is that they have dishes in English as well as Mandarin.  This system was also set up in that we wrote down the numbers of what we wanted.  

We got:

*Chicken Wings

*Beef Skewers

*Pork Belly Skewers

*Lamb Skewers

*A Whole Fish

*Garlic Skewers

*Eggplant

And, we weren't able to finish it all.  And, it was amazing.  The seasoning was spot on; everything was absurdly flavorful.

And, here's the best part! It cost 138RMB.  What's that you say, Emily?  That sounds like a lot of money!  Hahah.  Doing the math it  came to $20 USD.  $20!!!  We had a ton of food. xD

Then we went to this Italian place  for dessert. We ordered two really lovely things to share and we each ordered a drink.  He  got  a fancy coffee and I got a fancy hot chocolate.  The desserts were lovely.  We got a fancy chocolate cake that was really dense with a ganache topping  and a fresh made apple pie slice.  And....it was 90RMB...which is $13.19! xD

Yes, I'm focusing on the money here (although the food is nothing at all to scoff at! Like seriously, that dinner was amazing!), but seriously this sort of meal would have cost probably $100 dollars or near about back home. xD

Dumpling Update:

Still no dumplings yet.=[