De-dish-ious

Today we made our second of 3 trips to immigration. It took us 1.5 hours of waiting for about 5 minutes worth of paperwork and fingerprints. Does this give you any idea the number of people that are immigrating to Macau? A lot. It's a thriving economy in a world that isn't.

For lunch, we went to a restaurant that's a knock off of a Beijing chain. But it was good. It was Northeastern style Chinese food. We ordered pork/pickled cabbage dumplings, an eggplant/potato dish, white rice, and spicy tofu. It was fabulous, cheap, and a variety since we shared. I'm trying to remember to take pictures of the food now, but I'm just not thinking 'camera' when there is food in front of me. Pictures will help you understand better what we're eating as it can sometimes be hard to describe. This picture below was taken about half way through the meal (sorry!) but we were scooping it out into a tiny bowl from the main dishes (as is custom in Chinese family style eating), so no worries, nothing is eaten off of.

The dish at the top left is the eggplant and potato dish. It was in a sauce similar to brown gravy. Absolutely delicious. The spicy tofu is bottom right--one of my favorite dishes from Beijing last year, but this dish did not taste like what I've had. Still good though. The dumplings are top right. These were boiled, though you can get them steamed or fried as well. This is not a very good picture to show you the food, so I'll have to work on this...but at least you get a glimpse.

Teaching 1st grade was uneventful except that when I walked the kids downstairs, one little boy walked up to me, said my name and then did a little dance. haha. At least we were saying goodbye so I didn't have to pretend like he needed to be scolded...not sure if dancing for your teachers is 'acceptable' in school or not. My kids somehow forgot my name from last week though (I only see this class once a week) and were calling me Ms. Faw for some reason. I tried to help them remember my name rhyming with the word 'tall' ...to no avail. They don't know the word 'tall'.

We had our first English Salon tonight. No, it has nothing to do with hair. It's an extracurricular program where we speak English and do American cultural activities. Tonight they ordered Pizza Hut. Yay, right? Negative. Pizza Hut here has a lot more than pizza--a seafood salami pasta dish, some rice thing, a pepperoni egg roll looking thing, mini hot dogs, and chicken. I tried a little of most things...and felt icky afterward. It's true, of all things Pizza Hut gets to my stomach. I'm not giving up hope that they have decent pizza though.

The debate tonight was "This house believes that prisons need to be reformed." Nothing too interesting to report--mostly the logical arguments on both sides.

Home now, curing this stomach fluster with some wonderfully fruity yogurt-esque drink and herbal tea Lauren provided. No worries, I will be perfect when I awake. I won't be eating seafood salami pasta junk ever again though...