Lunch

Not much going on here today. It was not my teaching day. So, for lack of a better subject I will talk about lunch. Actually, I usually pack my lunch. I'm ashamed to say it is often a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. (I can get both skippy peanut butter and some decent bread at a French based store known as "Carfour."). I buy a yogurt at a little shop on campus and usually head to the break room to eat my lunch and lesson plan in the two hours between the end of language class and the start of model school. I am trying to break my stomach in gently. I will occasionally venture outside of the bounds of campus, but I have limited myself mainly to beef noodle soup (niu rho mian) or baozi, a sort of steamed bun with meat in the middle (four for about 12 cents). But todayI tried a new place lured by a vegatarian friend who said the place had great vegetables. The restaurants outside of campus look pretty much the same. There are no doors or windows, just an opening in the building withe a few tables set up inside and a few outside. Here, however, we were allowed to go into the kitchen and see the vegetables laid out neatly on trays. There were about twelve types of vegetables, some of which I recognized, some which I did not. The five of us ordered four dishes of vegetables: some strips of tofu, some soy beans, some peppers, and a tomato egg dish. I forgot, though, that unless you specifically tell them not to add meat every dish will come with meat. So our vegetarian experience turned into a meat and vegetarian experience (with plenty of rice of course). The bill for all the food and five beers came to about seventy-five cents apiece, which is about typical out here.