Patience, Young Grasshopper

After looking around a shopping... place... it's hard to describe but there are a lot of these in the area (it's a multi-storied building with a bunch of shops in it, like a mall but much more ghetto), I walked back to my university and saw a lady with a cart selling plants, little fishies... and ginormous grasshoppers. The pictures just don't do them justice. She'd gathered quite the foreign audience at this point, which meant lots of Chinese had stopped to watch too. She joked that we could buy them to eat, we said "really?!" and she laughed. Then one of my classmates said Americans eat grasshoppers all the time. Way to plant misconceptions about Americans. He's one of those guys who can look completely serious when he's completely lying. Funny, but confusing if you're not in on the joke.


Here're a few interesting bites to eat I've had: one is jidan (eggs with some seasoning on them) and the other is a shrimp? I know you can eat that in the US, but I don't think I ever have because I don't like sea food too much. The last is a delicious noodle dish I got from a Korean restaurant - Esther, are you proud of me??


This last picture is just too funny, we were waiting at the subway for everyone to buy their tickets and all of a sudden it got super windy and the guys decided to strike a little boy-band pose for me. Made all the more funny because they're all wearing white t-shirts (they went to a highlighter party after dinner).


Finally, a daily occurrence, trying to figure out who pays what after dinner because in China they just DON'T do separate checks. We start off sticking to the language pledge but as the minutes tick by and everyone starts to get a little frustrated, English creeps in.