Ill finish explaining these later as i am currently waiting on a taxi to the airport so i can drag myself to beijing. As much as im sure it will be cool, i sort of wish i was staying here now so i can spend well needed bonding time with my new friends. Fiona (fifi) and Andrea Go (just "go") have become my closest friends here. Its funny how you can immediately feel so close to someone under the right circumstances. We went to a place in town called magas last night to get this dee-lishhhh-us salad filled with snap peas edamame chicken beets pumpkin slices and grilled chicken.ooooo. ahhhhh. Im sorry that this blog is habitually about food, but its such a large part of my life now. I miss Go and Fifs already :) see in a few days gals!
Fi and I hung at her apartment yesterday for a bit. Her friends Kim and Lou were visiting from england and incidentally will be in beijing at the same time as me so we will try to meet up then. Im kinda nervous about beijing, ive heard its harder to get around there, and less friendly to my kind...o well, que sera sera. She made me organic english tea yesterday, and in the gorgeous day we caught a glimpse of a buzzy city about to basically shut down for a week and a half. This is her counter, pre nuclear holocaust aka chinese new year...... gotta go more later!
okay back...and in Beijing! havent seen anything but my hotel yet but hope to meet up with a mutual friend tonight. Really, mutual friends make the world go round. Anyways the above picture of Dinner the other night with Fi, lou, and kim. yup, we finally did it, we went to dim sum. Now...i cant eat anything at dim sum because its all flour based dumplings...but i had a great pot of jasmine tea...eh, i just wanted to see waht it was all about. It looked beautiful, thats the thing about food, even if you dont eat it, you can still enjoy it on some level. The smell and the look and the texture and quality...maybe like appreciating the way someone looks without haveing sex with them? gah, food and sex are basically teh same thing its ridiculous. i digress..
So Portia and Natlie went to Taiwan for the new year spring festival and I...well i spent some much needed "me" time before shoving off to Beijing this morning. The other day i slept in..yes, you heard it here first, i slept past the hour of 6 or 7 am! and i woke up, slipped into my red robe, and made myself a breakfast that declared freedom. Just eggs and spinach and sesame and fish but simple is hot these days! I sang while making it, and then did the dishes...feeling ever so domestic, i smiled, a big smile.
The more i hang with andrea and Fi the more i find funny little opportunities to photograph. This is just an entire store dedicated to fruit, i just sort of liked the composition here, nothing special, but it jogs my memory of that night.
Ahhh, Miss Go. Andrea Go. She is to die for, like precious gem or something, she is so good to look at and better to talk to. This is her at our "hot pot' meal, which is basically the chinese version of the The Melting Pot, the menu was entirely in characters, (sans pin yin) so it was really fun between Fi and I trying to order for all of us. If only we knew how to say soy sauce...eventually we said something the effect of black salty water or something....i dont know, they got it and liked it. Go is prettiest when shes not looking, shes a force. When i was complaining about having to leave Shanghai for Beijing and missing all the home based fun, she said " fuck jessy, you cant think like that, you just have to look at whats in front of you, get your mind in beijing and have a wicked time...your assignment for tonight is to do something you never thought you would do, then call me, and report it" I swear this girl is ace. You meet the most fantastic people when you travel, its a shame they are always on the go, you can never hang on to them. One day ill track miss go down and fi, and well all live merrily in neutral ground. Thats the thing, all the people i really admire and treasure are kind of dispersed throughout the globe. Now, really this is a good thing because it is kind of what makes all these people so great...at the same time i wish i could just bring them all to the same city and we could live happily ever after. Really, the problem is just that were all out too busy being awesome to try and coordinate something like that. all this to say that i have great friends, and when i make my first million im throwing a party of international friends in which i will pay airfares and hotel fares for all the guests that will migrate to it. wouldnt that be amazing?
okay okay okay so this is hot pot. That molten volcano of metal and water and herbs in the middle flash cooks all the junk we threw in it. so like theres a combination of pork and woo er ( chinese mushroomy fungus thing) corriander and cilantro and shitake and rice noodles and chilies, omg the chilies, my mouth was in pain and it HURT SO GOOD!
so tomorrow im going to either the wall or tiananmen i forget, but im sure ill be stewing and reviewing and working up a great inner monologue that i will then translate to this thingy. Plus its valentines day, ugh, so im sure ill have plenty to bitch about and plenty to praise as well. I think im gonna start blogging about music.
Happy new year my little beans.
j
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