Going to the Dogs

Saturday, December 6. Finish paper for Foreign Experts writing competition! Take it to be printed and photocopied. Then deliver to Mr. Zhang to translate.

Finally, today, after months of begging, we have big bottles of purified water delivered for the dispensers in our apartments - glory hallelujah! It has been like pulling teeth around here to get someone to help us do this (don't really understand why), but I think we now have it set up so we can do it ourselves. May it please God. Now I can put water directly from the "water cooler" (which doesn't cool) into the Brita pitcher without boiling it first.

Walk up to Yandi Square and down the street to get this week's copy of the China Daily supplement. Ride the bus downtown to buy more yarn and to Carrefour to get yogurt, green tea, orange juice etc.

Sunday, December 7. A quiet day working except for a break for lunch with Mrs. Tong. She picks me up on her motorcycle (yep, that's right) and then proceeds to drive the wrong way (!) down LuShan road (there's a divider in the middle of the road, like a boulevard) to the next intersection where she crosses over onto the other side of the street! Like I said, there's a certain Wild West quality to Chinese driving! Cynthia and her husband are also invited, and among other things, we have dog meat (yep, that's right) for lunch! OK, so I'm a good sport and hey, I've eaten snails and crocodile, so how bad could this be? Well, in fact, it isn't bad. It's just that in general I'm not crazy about the way meat is prepared in China. It generally is cooked for a long time and is rather chewy. So I have enough to be polite and then concentrate on the huang gua (similar to zucchini), the egg custard, and the peanuts! :) It's really wonderful to be able to spend time with colleagues away from the office.