Chicken II

The chicken adventure (see below) ended well. It was a little small, but it tasted juicy and delicious!

A Day in the Life...

We had a request for what our daily life looks like here, so here it is!

If we have school:

6:00/6:30 – wake up, get ready, personal time, breakfast

7:30ish – to school… 25 min walk or by bus or 10 min bike ride

8:00 – 11:30 – class – Reading, Writing, Listening, or Speaking

two a day w/10 min breaks and slightly relaxed beginning and end times

11:30 – lunch at the cafeteria, a restaurant, or home

12:30… Afternoons could include any combination of the following

hanging out w/students – ping pong, coffee/tea, shopping, basketball, movies, Chinese chess, etc.

shopping for groceries – possibly not all at the same place

shopping/hunting for whatever other random item we need like a guitar, heater, oven, etc.

studying for an hour or two

baking, cleaning, doing laundry and hang drying it

going to the gym

running (really walking, taking the bus, or biking) other random errands like to the p.o. or the yarn shop

computer work like budget, e-mail, and letters

5:00 – 7:00 – somewhere in there have dinner

7:00... Evenings vary. They could include…

meeting students to study or hang out

our own date night

some marriage time

Skype time

any of the afternoon activities listed above

10:00ish – to bed!

Weekends: Saturdays usually try to hang out. Sundays usually have a day of rest.

Right now we’re on winter break, so our schedule is a little different. We still try to be up by 7:00 or 8:00. In the mornings we have some personal time, work out, Skype and study. In the afternoons we each have our own things we’re working on like deep cleaning the apartment, making a video of our life here, meeting with our tutor, updating our blog, writing Christmas thank yous, and E’s taking a class online.

So that’s our life! I personally like to be a scheduled person, but I’ve had to become much more flexible here. No day is the same, and people here don’t really plan more than a couple days ahead of time. It’s good for me, right?!

Chicken

There are parts of a chicken that we would probably never eat that are much more respected here. I have never been brave enough to buy a whole chicken, but the other day I did. It was all wrapped up... just the skin on it... I though it looked pretty good.

This morning I took it out of the bag and was deciding how to best cook it. I noticed an attached part was tucked into it. Ah of course, silly me, those are the feet! I then thought, "Well, they wouldn't still have the head on it too, would they?" As I turned it over and saw the pale head dangling there, I gave a huge shriek and ran out of the kitchen. What did I expect? Well, we all know what I expected, but next time I will know better.

After calming down, I decided to be mature, accept that these are natural, and calmly cut them off. The chicken (minus head and feet) is now roasting nicely in the oven. Ah... sigh... Why didn't I grow up on a farm?...

-Andrea

The New Year

2010 has started off with a bang! Tonight we had our first kitchen fire! Just so you know, it’s really not a good idea to put a pot of cider with a small pot holder stuck to the bottom on a gas burner and then start it. When you come back into the kitchen you will notice a slightly larger flame and some black smoke coming from under the pot… At least our dinner guests were entertained!

Back up to Christmas though... On Christmas Eve we had dinner at a place having a special Christmas buffet. Good food and a chance to try some interesting new things like a whole crab! (We had the waiter teach us how to open it.) Friday we slept in, made a big brunch, and talked to Eric's family on Skype. The long weekend was restful, but it was back to school Monday. We did leave class early though to Skype with Andrea's family and open gifts with them.

We had a good New Year's Eve as well. We had a few friends over to our place where we ate a few snacks and played the East Asian version of the game “Spoons”: “Chopsticks.”