Dog tastes like beef

This week started out relatively tame - I went to my first painting class at CET and the teacher taught us how to paint Chinese vegetables. Luckily, my roomate the art major was there to help me create a painting with a somewhat recognizable cabbage, radishes, and peppers.


On Thursday the adventures began. Annetta, Ellis, Jason, and I, being the foodies that we are, decided that we really wanted to try eating dog meat. Yup, dog, like the thing that barks in your backyard. I am not one to be cruel to animals in any way, but I have to say that the spicy dog soup that we ordered was actually quite good (it tasted like beef). I probably won't eat it again but it's one more item to add to the list of strange foods I've tried.


Last week during class, we had an assignment to walk to a nearby park and look for environmental phrases posted around the area. It was probably one of the more interesting walks I've had around our neighborhood. While walking past the Korean barbecue restaurant, we saw all the servers going through morning exercises and getting ready for the day. They were all marching and chanting in unison and it reminded me somewhat of high school PE class.


We also walked past a yam vendor, and I finally gave into the irresistable aroma and bought my first Chinese street yam. Eating that yam was pretty much like biting into heaven, and it definitely helped our dry class activity move along a little faster.


On Friday night we went out to celebrate Joanna's birthday at a $2 buffet barbecue. There ended up being about 30 of us taking probably the most crowded subway ever for an entire hour across town. Nevertheless, it was well worth the wait and we were able to take over the restaurant like the obnoxious waiguoren we are.


This weekend was slightly more relaxed than the past few weekends, which I definitely needed after three weeks of never sleeping more than five hours at a time. On Saturday, my roomate took us to Huan Le Gu, which is the new amusement park in Beijing. I thought I was good with rollercoasters, but the rollercoasters here were INTENSE. After 3 or 4 rides, my head was ready to explode and I wasn't quite sure I'd make the subway ride back to school.


On the way home, we stopped at Lao Beijing Zhajiang Mian, which has the best zhajiang noodles in Beijing. Zhajiang noodles are basically like Chinese spaghetti, and they were absolutely amazing at this restaurant. The other great part was that we realized this restaurant is only 2 blocks from school, so we now have a new place we can regularly go to.


If you haven't noticed from this entry, life in Beijing is very food-centric. A few friends and I and our Chinese roomates have started calling each other "fei zhu" (chubby pigs), partially also due to the fact that it is the year of the pig on the Chinese calendar. Luckily, many of us fei zhu like to go running so that hopefully we will not return to the US looking like fei zhu. With that said, my time abroad probably wouldn't be half as fun without all our food adventures.

Bon appetit!