Qingyan II and Lots of Dumplings

A couple of weeks ago, Matt and I got bored of Guiyang and decided to
go to Qingyan ancient town, which I went to with my Chinese teachers a
few months ago. We managed to find the right buses on our own,
somehow, and got there within the hour. It wasn't as crowded as last
time I went, although there was a group of foreign tourists there-
some old French people, which was the most foreigners I'd seen since
vacation.

We skipped on the famous pig's feet of Qingyan, which are everywhere
there, but I did get the strangely delicious rose flavored pudding
that I had last time. We did some shopping (okay, Matt watched me do
some shopping), and I showed off my archery skills. Qingyan has a nice
change of scenery from the city- it's more country fields and karst
mountains.

Last Tuesday, Huang Min and Maosi, our bosses, decided to have all the
Chinese and foreign staff over to their apartment for dinner. Huang
Min was making dumplings. Their house is outside of the city in a more
suburban area I haven't been to before. Anyways, it was pretty fun to
hang out with everyone from school. and then more dumplings...

For our Chinese lesson last Thursday Yang Haiying taught Maja and I
how to cook dumplings. First we went shopping for the ingredients.
This is one of the those things where shopping is incredibly different
than America. We bought the vegetables down a little alleyway, which
led us to a huge underground building full of fresh meat, which is
where we bought the pork. We bought the dough pre-made so if I try to
recreate this at home I'm going to have to figure out how to make the
dough.

Then we cooked at the cafe area in the school. We made pork and spring
onion and pork and cabbage dumplings. They turned out pretty well, I
think. Hopefully I can bring a bit of Chinese cooking skills home with
me.

This week is open classes, which means parents can come and watch. So
all we have to do is survive this week