An Ordinary Day

Since I've gotten plenty of blog mileage out of my rather unwelcome key adventure, it's seems fair that I should get to post a mundane ordinary type post in my usual vein--what I did with my Sunday, plus pictures. I've really fallen out of the daily record discipline I intended to keep when I first got to China, but it lasted so long that it seems worth going back to. Anyway, turning over a new leaf...

I spent all of this morning preparing for my classical Chinese lesson at 2. Around 11:30, when I finished preparing, I made myself some lunch, my best effort at pasta given what's available, my pathetic hot plate kitchen, plus laziness: angel hair pasta tossed with dried basil and olive oil (I finally broke down and bought some), peeled and sliced cherry tomatoes (very sweet and delicious), freshly-shelled pine nuts, and parmesan cheese. A note on freshly peeled pine-nuts: they are incredibly delicious, about a hundred times better than ordinary pine-nuts that come pre-shelled. The down-side is, they're an absolute bitch to shell, being tiny and slippery and odd-shaped. I'll make a separate post on these eventually, because I have a feeling that that bag I bought is going to be lasting a good long time...

After lunch, I embarked on a much-needed cleaning of my fish-tank, window-seat, and kitchen. I decided, surveying the prodigious algae growth, that it was time to just take the rocks and shells out of Tashtego's tank, which would make cleaning a lot easier and therefore I'll (hopefully) do it more often. But since I was retiring the rocks and shells for good, I gave them a very thorough and time-consuming scrubbing.

Next thing I knew, it was 1:50 and I was a total disaster area, still unshowered, up to my elbows in soap, algae, rags, ,and wet grubby clothes. So I texted Pillar and pushed back the lesson an hour. I didn't feel bad since he had done this to me twice already, and anyway we do the lesson in his room so it's not like he'd have to wait or go back and forth.

The lesson was good, if oddly uninspiring.

Afterwards, I went to the campus Korean restaurant by myself and had japchae, chewy translucent noodles with strips of meat and vegetables and mushrooms. Every japchae is different. The amount of variation in what is basically a pretty simple dish always surprises me. This one was on the sweet-ish, mild, oily side, but good. And yes, that means I did eat noodles for two of my three meals today. Here's looking at you, Pocket of Bolts.

Having eaten all those noodles, I decided I should go for a walk after dinner. Heading toward Unnamed Lake, I found a little stream with absurdly beautiful yellow irises. I think irises may be my favorite flower. They are almost done blooming now, but still pretty; here are some of the pictures.




I sat by the lake and tried to work for a bit, but I was overcome with heat and sleepiness. Apparently the temperature was in the 90s today, and felt like it too.

So I went home, and continued to fail to work. See results of procrastination in separate post.