Among the many advantages to living overseas are the near constant opportunities to meet interesting people and make new friends. I study Chinese every morning at a local school called HuaYuan 花园。 Two of my classmates are from Korea and they’re so cute you just wanna wrap ’em up and take ’em home. (He’s a quick to laugh college professor and she’s a bungee jumping housewife.) They invited me and my Portuguese friend and classmate to their temporary home here in Beijing for some authentic Korean food. I bought some flowers that were given to my Korean classmate’s mother who is around 85 I think. Elder Mama is seated at the center, by Asian standards.
Then there was the food. I think some of the names (in pinyin) were Pao Cai Tang, hei dou, Hanguo kaorou, ga doo ji. Anyway they were all interesting but I got gas from eating too much of some kind of orange colored spicy root vegetable. Some of the most colorful food I’ve ever eaten. It was great.
