Hot Pot

Hot Pot and KFC

So here we are again in the park but not quite so early.

After a fairly busy and social day yesterday, I slept in this morning.

I took a walk to the school today at about 10:00am (just to get out).
Kenny was there (I think for the same reason).
I had mentioned that I wanted to buy someDVD'ss because my DVD player didn't work with my American DVD's.

We walked around the corner from the school and there was the DVD store.
I wanted Kenny to go with me to make sure they had English version.
So I picked out a five new releases and I do mean new.
Mission Impossible 3, DaVinci Code, X-men III and a few others. At $1.00 each.
These were still on at the theaters back home when I left.

Afterwards Kenny had to go back home to have lunch with his mother.
On my way back home (different rout) I stumbled across an old friend…KFC.
So I had my fist dine out meal by myself.
It was easy to order...The #6...Qing....(please)
Four small pieces of chicken, some kind of corn, peppers and I don't know what else mix and a mango drink.
Just like back home...Sort of.

On my new rout home I too a detour down a back street with a lot of little shops.
This street and shops seemed very old. It was kind of like walking back in time.
Some very old little building were very dilapidated.
I even saw my first public urination.
Probably a 17 year old kid just walked up and started pissing on a wall along the street.
People everywhere..Nobody seemed to even notice.

At one intersection there was quite a crowd. I didn't know what was going on but I managed my way through.
On my way back I realized that they were waiting for their children to get out of school for lunch.
All the little food shops I had passed on my first pass were all a hopping...It was noon.

When I got home I immediately broke out my DVDs and tried them in the DVD player.. No luck...Chinese only.
Then I tried my lap-to..No luck there either..Wrong format. Damn.
So much for a good deal.

Red Berries
Sucia wanted me to come to the school at 2:00 to do some prep work...So I thought.
When I got there I found out that we were all going to go pick red berries.
So we all loaded into a van. (Sucia, Jessy, Kenny, Andy and myself) and took off to the berry farm.
On the way there we stopped at the junior high school and pick up a friend of theirs.
An American named Matt. Matt was from Tampa Florida and had been here for about a year. He was also getting ready to leave on Saturday.
So after not seeing one American or non Chinese in three days I was kind of like running into a brother. Matt had lots of helpful tips for me. And he answered a lot of questions that my Chinese friend couldn't.

The van dropped us off out in the middle of nowhere and a man took us into the woods where the red berry trees were. It was hot.
After a while we realized all the good berries were on the tops of the trees.
So after a while and lot of negotiating over price..We ended up just buying some baskets of berries. We could have done that on the streets, cheaper.
But it was nice to get out and see the countryside and see where theses berries came from.

You can see some pics. On Red Berries post.

Back at school we had a couple of hours of class and then Matt and a couple of other Americans showed up so we could all go out to dinner.

HOT POT

This was very interesting.




We all sat at a large round table with a big divided pot filled with spiced water in the middle. One side spicy.


So... it was the three new American guys, Hylan and Ben, Matt, the teachers, the head master of the school and myself.

The waitress brought us a bunch of plates filled with sliced beef, live shrimp, sliced sheep, some kind of stomach meat (no really), mushrooms, fish (with head attached of course)dumplings, meatballs (not like the ones we are used to...Looked like testicles so I had to ask to make sure they weren't) and a bunch of stuff that nobody could translate into English.
Man-o-man was it good.
Mr. David (headmaster) told me that when you eat Hot Pot it is tradition to eat three things. Those were mushrooms, sheep and stomach.

When I was camping in the mountains of Jamaica I ate some goat gut soup, so a little stomach didn't seem so bad.


This bowl had live shrimp in it. The leaves are there to keep them from jumping out.

What's next?