Food, Books, Coworkers, and Kids....

The past two days have been really fun. Lastnight I went out to eat with Steve and Kay Griffin, a couple from Houston, MS I met at church a few weeks ago. They are on a 3 month vacation in Beijing and are hoping to move here permanently as teachers. We went to Peter's Tex Mex Grill, although Tex Mex was a small part of the menu. It was basically just an all around American restaurant, similar to The Dinner Bell or Martha's Menu. I had grilled chicken with mashed potatos, broccoli, and sauteed mushrooms. It was good to sit down and have an American meal with a truly American couple, just down home country folks. Afterwards I did some grocery shopping at the nearby Jenny Lous grocery, an American style grocery. I bought every can of Dr. Pepper they had on the shelf as well as some other "can't live without it" items.

This morning, myself and two of my EF coworkers, Carol and Zack, took the subway over to Wangfujing, a modern shopping area in Beijing. We visited a food street, which is basically a street lined with food stands. All the food is fresh and cooked to order. There is everything from shish kebabs, vegetables, soups, noodles, roasted corn on the cob,and scorpions and seahorses on a stick. Kind of like the state fair in Jackson (well except for the scorpions and seahorses on a stick) We each had a bowl of noodles before walking through a small open air market selling mostly cheap plastic junk. I stopped at one stand selling cheaply made magic tricks. The man demonstrated the linking rings and a svengali deck for me. He wanted 165 yuan for the linking rings (about 24 dollars). They were the cheapest and worst set I had ever seen. Zack offered him 5 (less than 1 dollar), probably what they are worth.

We then wandered on to the Foreign Language Bookstore. This is a massive bookstore filled with 5 floors of books, music, and movies. I was in desperate need of some reading material to fill the time that I would usually spend watching King of the Hill and Family Guy reruns on tv. I picked up three good books. While we were in the store, three Chinese boys, probably about 7 or 8 years old ran over to us and were just amazed that me and Zack were foreign. They wanted to converse with us, but since neither me or Zack are fluent in Chinese, our conversation was pretty much limited to "Nei Hao" (Hello) and smiling. One of the boys told Carol (who is Chinese) for me and Zack to talk to her and then she could translate for us. Smart kids. When they left, they ran off yelling "Welcome to Beijing" in Chinese. It was enough to make the most hard hearted American tourist smile.

Now, I am home for the day until I go to work tomorrow. I think I will have some Chef Boyardee and Dr. Pepper now.