Monday: 30/01/2011

We’ve had quite a few adventures with the Chinese language teacher, Susan recently. It started when she invited another student to lunch on Friday. From there, they decided to go to this chocolate/coffee shop Susan liked. I was lucky enough to get pulled along. (It was Emily, Isaac, Alek, and me). It turned out to be one of the most amazing chocolate experiences of my life, much less China. They don’t know how to make coffee here. To get coffee that isn’t Instant Nesquik, you have to go to a reasonably expensive coffee shop with a name in English. Whisk is the peak of perfection in this realm of expensive drinks. The owner imports all of his ingredients. Every last one comes from South America. When you order a hot chocolate, the only options are 60%, 75%, and 85% cocoa. Beautiful. Isaac ordered this astoundingly delicious hot chocolate with a shot of espresso, I got a double shot espresso, and Alek got a hot chocolate. The hot chocolate is only about 3oz for about 8USD, but it is worth it. It comes in a really stylish porcelain cup that’s shaped like an egg with a flat bottom, a diagonal cut across the top, and a 1-inch flat runway that the chocolate runs down before ending in your mouth. This place is definitely on the top of the list. I’m actually taking Tori for dinner on Valentine’s day!
After wandering around the city a bit more with Susan, learning Chinese, teaching a few odd English phrases, we ended up in a Chinese DVD shop. These movies are ridiculously cheap. 10kuai gets you the hd version of any movie you could want. It takes about 4 weeks for a movie to get from the theater to one of these shops. Instead of renting movies for a dollar, you can own them. This is 100% illegal though, and none of these discs can cross the border into the US…
Susan was so embarrassed that we paid for her drink at Whisk, that she invited all of us over for dinner at her place for a home cooked meal. It was honestly the best food I’ve had since entering China. She fully understands that we don’t like bones in our meat, so we ended up with a soup, chicken, the most delicious sweet glazed pork you can imagine, fresh steamed veggies (this is harder to come by than you’d think), rice, delicious cinnamon raisin bread, and plenty of chocolate! It was delightful, and we were extremely grateful for her generosity.