So I finally have hot water again and celebrated with a hot shower. Too hot. I need to remember where the middle space between freezing and scalding is. If it ever existed. The warm bathroom is nice but not the inability to stand more than a few seconds under the shower head. I also have the use of my stove back. My wok is at the point where I can wash it and heat it over the stove to dry and smell the mix of garlic, green onions, ginger, soy sauce, and rice wine I typically toss in with just about anything I cook in there. I felt pretty accomplished about seasoning it since my stove is pretty hot and soon I didn't even have water in there, it was just the wok smoking and smelling of stir fries past. I can't wait to do more than just pork and peppers or basic vegetable stir fries. I'm still struggling a little with the timing and I've had to open the windows more than once because the air got smoky but I think I'm getting the hang of it. At the very least, the pork is cooked through and the peppers aren't totally soft from being cooked or covered in oil.
I've found myself hanging around the section of Vanguard where they sell snacks and some of the nicer teas. I knew that it sold Changsha and Hunan snacks but I never realized that there were pu er brick from Hunan as well. I found it especially surprising that it said "pu er" in English on the packaging since I heard that pu er technically comes from Yunnan alone. I thought about buying one but opted instead for the cheap mini "tuo cha" cakes that they sell individually/by weight. I don't need to buy a knife or pick for it and it's already the right size for individual brewing. But it's not as nice to look at when brewing. I guess to make them this small and cheap they couldn't use the whole leaf so it's all finely chopped leaf. It didn't taste too badly though and at when my hot water was out I figured that at the very least I could have hot pu er or tie guan yin. I've been thinking about trying ba bao (eight treasure) tea which doesn't have tea leaves at all but is kind of a sweet tea with dates, longans, a lump of sugar, and I can't remember what all else. I guess it's the closest you'll get to a dessert tea here, and it's still designed for your health. I've had some mix of dates and goji berries before, I remember because another teacher offered me some tea after I shared some of my snacks and he started to laugh and had to run to baidu to look up the words when I asked him what it was. He kept saying "Chinese wolfberry" but the words he used in Chinese were "guoji" which sounded close enough for me to pull out my phone and put the Pinyin into Pleco for translation.
Aside from necessities such as eating and drinking, I didn't have quite the strong start I meant to have this first week of school. My lesson plan wasn't terribly strong, the kids were incredibly noisy and I had to ask them to put homework away repeatedly, and I need to have clear duties for my classroom assistants so that I can better put my consequences into place. Having others observe my class doesn't always help me because if one of the other Chinese teachers comes in they will all behave quite differently from how they are with foreigners. But I want to be much better both for myself, for the other students, and for the 2nd observation I have coming up this term. It's not much progress if I still have a ton of noise by that time. But on the other hand, I have done a better job of laying out what I want to do for this term than I did last term. And as I might have said before, one of my classes applauded when I walked in so badly can I be doing?
I've found myself hanging around the section of Vanguard where they sell snacks and some of the nicer teas. I knew that it sold Changsha and Hunan snacks but I never realized that there were pu er brick from Hunan as well. I found it especially surprising that it said "pu er" in English on the packaging since I heard that pu er technically comes from Yunnan alone. I thought about buying one but opted instead for the cheap mini "tuo cha" cakes that they sell individually/by weight. I don't need to buy a knife or pick for it and it's already the right size for individual brewing. But it's not as nice to look at when brewing. I guess to make them this small and cheap they couldn't use the whole leaf so it's all finely chopped leaf. It didn't taste too badly though and at when my hot water was out I figured that at the very least I could have hot pu er or tie guan yin. I've been thinking about trying ba bao (eight treasure) tea which doesn't have tea leaves at all but is kind of a sweet tea with dates, longans, a lump of sugar, and I can't remember what all else. I guess it's the closest you'll get to a dessert tea here, and it's still designed for your health. I've had some mix of dates and goji berries before, I remember because another teacher offered me some tea after I shared some of my snacks and he started to laugh and had to run to baidu to look up the words when I asked him what it was. He kept saying "Chinese wolfberry" but the words he used in Chinese were "guoji" which sounded close enough for me to pull out my phone and put the Pinyin into Pleco for translation.
Aside from necessities such as eating and drinking, I didn't have quite the strong start I meant to have this first week of school. My lesson plan wasn't terribly strong, the kids were incredibly noisy and I had to ask them to put homework away repeatedly, and I need to have clear duties for my classroom assistants so that I can better put my consequences into place. Having others observe my class doesn't always help me because if one of the other Chinese teachers comes in they will all behave quite differently from how they are with foreigners. But I want to be much better both for myself, for the other students, and for the 2nd observation I have coming up this term. It's not much progress if I still have a ton of noise by that time. But on the other hand, I have done a better job of laying out what I want to do for this term than I did last term. And as I might have said before, one of my classes applauded when I walked in so badly can I be doing?
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