Happy 2013. I hope everyone is enjoying the start to the new year. As mentioned in the previous blog, we had an early start to our New Years celebration. Since school was closed, we headed out to the city a little earlier than expected so Ryan did some research and found a nice pizza place to eat at. Well, we found the pizza place but it was closed; they only serve dinner. Just like always, things don't go as planned but we just come up with option B. Next door from the pizza joint was a restaurant that looked nice so we went in. They had a very large menu and lots of things that looked good (and some things that did not). Ryan ordered the duck with orange. I think duck looks like little turkeys. It was great. It tasted like left over Christmas or Thanksgiving ham.
I ordered a Thai bowl. As you can see there are all kinds of things it there. This was also wonderful. There were these little tiny eggs in there about 1/3 the size of a chicken egg. We tried to figure out what bird the eggs came from but decided it was probably better that we didn't know. We also ordered broccoli which came out last but we were pretty full by then, we did eat some and used the left over Thai sauce to make it tastier.
So for a late afternoon snack we had a hot dog. It was an American hot dog. Chinese hot dogs are not very good so we were happy it tasted American. It's hard to specially order things here given the language barrier so Ryan has learned to just pick the pickles off and I eat things I mildly dislike like ketchup and mustard.
Then we were off the the hotel. Like most planning around here, Ryan does it and I just go a long for the ride. I don't know why I haven't learned from this but he keeps things exciting. So we took the subway and walked to the area of town were the hotel and bar was for the New Year's Eve party. I wasn't sure where Ryan was taking me. It was all dirty and dusty and old looking. I mean really dirty and poor looking. The alleys that we walked down were very narrow. However, like many times before, once we got to where we were going it was beautiful inside. We got to the hotel and Ryan knocked on the door. No answer. There was a phone number so he called it and someone answered in Chinese so that got us no where. Then we looked on our conformation card and called that number and no answer.... so what to do now? Well, I knocked on the door with some gusto and sure enough someone came to answer. Later we found our there was a door bell...
After checking in we made it to our room. The hotel is 200 years old and had little insulation. The room was very nice inside but FREEZING. I tried taking a nap under the covers and we cranked the heat up but it never really did warm up.
Slippers anyone?
After our short nap we tried to find the hotel restaurant but they were closed for New Years Eve. We weren't that hungry from our afternoon hotdog and thought there were going to be snacks at the brewery for the party so we just hung out at the hotel bar because we didn't want to venture out into the cold anymore than we had to. Have we mentioned that it's cold here?
We found the brewery for the New Years eve party. We were the first to
arrive. It was nice to talk to the folks running the joint. They were
from America so it was nice to talk to some fellow native English
speakers that know where Charlotte is. There were some other foreigners at the event it was nice
talking to everyone. They had great tasting the beers. It was much better than the typical beer here which is light beer. The first one I tried was a Christmas ale but the beers called Flying Whale IPA and Monkey Fist were our favorites. Maybe that's just because they have cool names.
There was a snack at the party but just peanuts. We were getting pretty hungry by this point. Someone had pizza delivered and we thought that would be a good idea. The owners wife (who is Chinese) helped us order a pizza. It was a great tasting pizza. We really love anything with cheese because it's so rare. Ryan and I didn't make it to the champagne toast. We ended up leaving at 11:45 for the 10 minute walk to the hotel. So I think I was brushing my teeth as the clock struck 12.
So the heat in the hotel room was finally working at about 3 in the morning. I think the temperature had risen over 20 degrees from the time we first entered the room. The next morning Ryan asked what I wanted for breakfast. Remember how dirty the walk was to the hotel? I told Ryan that I wanted food that was in a sealed container and lots of water. So we ended up eating potato chips for breakfast.
Ryan took this picture. I think it's for his brother.
Next we went to a shopping mall. Ryan and I end up at a lot of shopping malls for people who don't like shopping. We think we go there because it's warm and they usually have good restaurants. This mall was 10 floors high. They had a Cinderella event going on.
Cinderella and Prince Charming... oh wait.. there are behind us.
We aren't sure if we teach tomorrow since we had Monday off. I hope we don't. I haven't prepared class for Thursday. Ryan is also feeling a bit under the weather. The air quality here is pretty bad and the air is dry. In our apartment, we run a humidifier all the time so when we are away for even a night we can tell a difference in how our throats feel. Hopefully he will be better soon. We have found Halls cough drops and very glad we brought some western OTC medicine.
We have had a pretty lazy day today. Ryan watched football. I have been painting. We made a trip to Wu-mart for lunch and shopping for necessities. We had rice, veggies, beef or chicken, and salads at a restaurant that shares spaces with Dairy Queen. It's my new favorite place near us to eat; I think because the food isn't covered in oil. I decided that since we had figured out how to use the hotplate in our room, I wanted to taken advantage of the International food section at Wu-mart. We bought pasta and Hunt's tomato sauce. I hope it turns out good. I bought enough for 4 meals. I don't plan on going outside for a while :o).
Ryan has been sleeping for a while so I think I will go wake him up.
Have a great start to the new year.
Julie
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