We did venture out for dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. For awhile, we were the only customer's in there, and we got a lot of attention, being foreign and all. Jon and Michael took care of the ordering with our waitress, who spoke very broken english. We ended up with 5 dishes, some which we're not 100% sure of what they are. But fortunately, we are all feeling brave and adventurous (especially me!) when it comes to the food, and tried it all and pretty much finished it all up. I even ate shrimp on a stick!! (P.S. I don't like shrimp, but this wasn't to bad. The worst part was cleaning off the head and legs - ick!) But I survived, as we all did.
We then just walked around the block to a local grocery store to try to conjure up some goodies for dinner at another time. On our way, we passed the Jade Buddhist Temple, which I'm sure we'll be visiting at a later date.
Here are some pics from Sunday:
Our feast
the "tasty" shrimp on a stick....it's blurry because I was probably shaking out of nervousness. It looked like it was going to crawl right off the stick.
Jaime enjoyed her shrimp a little too much.
Emily's tasty chicken foot.
The Jade Buddhist Temple
Yesterday (Monday) was the boys' first day of work. I must say that I did miss them during the day and this whole working thing is totally overrated. But regardless, they still had a job to do. You can read about Matthew's work experience on his blog.
Us ladies took it easy during the day. We worked out (yay for us!) and then hung out in the apartment for awhile. We then decided, that since we are in China, maybe we should get out and explore. We wanted to see what was around our apartment and find a good restaurant to go to. I was in the mood for just a good bowl of noodles, but we couldn't seem to find any place that served those. Either that, or we didn't look hard enough. We also wanted to find a restaurant that had menus with English writing or with pictures. We happened upon a hot pot restaurant that had both, so we decided to try it. For those who don't know, a hot pot is a local cuisine where they bring out a big steaming bowl of broth (ours was the Ying and Yang - mild and spicy) and put it over a flame so it can boil. The broth they brought out had a fish head, eyes and everything, floating in it, a good way to start our meal.
You then are supposed to order vegetables and beef, which they bring out raw, and cook them in the broth. We decided to order the chicken and duck, some spinach, and potatoes. The "chicken and duck" was actually maroon cubes of meat flavored jello, or at least that's the best way to describe it. Even after cooking it in the pot, the consistency and color stayed the same. We each tried one, then decided for health reasons, to not continue eating the jello cubes of meat. Thank goodness we ordered potatoes, because that's basically all I ate. We also had an audience while we ate, because there was a family sitting near us who kept watching us and laughing at us. They probably thought it was funny because we had no idea what we were doing. Quite an experience.
We walked around the area of our hotel a little to find out what's around us. What we found was that there's not much around us. So to do anything exciting, shop, or go to a good restaurant, we're going to have to travel more to the middle of the city, which is what I think we're going to do today (Tuesday).
Later that night, after the boys returned home from work, we all decided to stay in for dinner and we ordered New York pizza. Not the best pizza ever, but definitely fantastic compared to some of the meals we've had. Don't get us wrong, we are trying new things and enjoying it, but knowing we have 4 weeks ahead of us with new foods and new things, we are not opposed to some good ol' American food. Also, being the first day of work for the boys, they were exhausted and we just all wanted to relax in the apartment.
I've included some more pictures of the day below.
Our first hot pot....if you can see, there is a plate to the right with the "meat" in question...
My plates..I just thought they looked cool, even though we weren't sure if we were supposed to use the bowl, or the plate, or both...hmm...
sorry it's sideways...this was through the window of where we were eating
one of the many fruit markets...it all looks good, but you really can't eat it because they wash it in their water
the first accident we've seen...so Chinese drivers AREN'T invincible. I'm surprised we don't see more of these or are involved in more of these based on the way they drive
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