Last night, the English club, some teachers, Hong & myself went out for Hot Pot! It is much like the fondu that my family & I used to do growing up with meat, veggies & beef bouillon to cook the food. In Hot Pot, each of the tables has a flat stove element in the middle & they place a large wok filled with soup broth on it to boil. The broth is apparently made with boiled meat bones, some herbs & fruit. You then order various types of food (which Hong & I didn't do because everything was in Chinese) & throw it in the soup, let it cook for a bit & scoop it all out & chow down. Some of the types of food that we had were watercrest, romaine lettuce, mushrooms, chinese pumpkin, corn, beef, pork, fish, liver, japanese tofu, tofu, meat/japanese meat/pork/fish/prawn/caviar/cheese balls (they LOVE any food in a ball form), noodles, yam, spring rolls, etc. There was so much food there last night I can't remember it all! My favourite was the cheese ball. It's really strong/stinky white cheese inside of a ball of processed squid. It was very good! Cheese is very hard to come by here, so I haven't had it in a while. I couldn't stomach the liver though... it reminds me of the blood clots that are very popular here. It's typically the blood of duck & it's somewhat like gelatin, but it doesn't cook... it just stays looking like a jell-o ball of blood. So liver, uncooked, looks much like this, and I just can't get over the thought of it. I would like to think that I eat and have tried many different things.. but I don't think I will get over this one. We also tried lots of different drinks, many of them cold teas. One of them, no one would let us try because they think that it will not be good for our digestive system. Finally, they let us try it. They call it 'Chinese tea or Chinese beer'. They use it to counteract the effects of hot pot. Because hot pot if very warm, it cools the body & prevents things like pimples & kanker sores that you get from hot pot. I thought that it tasted very good... but they think that it's not very good, but have to drink it anyways during hot pot. We all had a great time & I was very thankful that everyone got together so that we could have this experience.
Today (Sunday) was the open house for CDSJ. I was unsure going into this what the main goal of this event was, but I asked around again today & found out that the 'purpose of this event is to attract new students'. This is their first year putting on such an event, I think they are fearful that their numbers are falling. The junior high & high school have many students, & grades 5 & 6 at our school are doing just fine, but kindergarten, grade 1, 2, 3, & 4 have very low numbers. I'm really not sure how many new families came to the event, most of the students that I saw are currently attending the school.We had lots of centers set up & prizes to give away. It was somewhat like a mini fair. I was so impressed by all of the technology that suddenly appeared today! There were some smart boards (which look much more advanced than our at home, You know the kind of chalkboards that slide back & forth to have more writing space. Well instead of them all being chalkboards, there is one that is a smart board). As well as these smartboards, there were these large computer screens that essentially did the same thing, but were smaller in size & black. They were HPs, but I don't really know what they are. It was kind of odd though, because at the end of the event, as soon as everyone left all of this technology got taken away! & I don't know where it was going or even if it belonged to the school?
On the way home, Hong & I decided to get some Bubble Tea. Patricia taught me how to order it last night in Chinese, so I wanted to try it out. I was so proud of myself because the guy working actually understood what I was saying!!! :) I think I enjoyed my Bubble Tea even more because of this.
Starting Thursday, Hong & I have a week and a half off... any suggestions of where we should go??
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