Steamed Vegetable Buns

My accomplishment for the day is having learned the chinese phrase for Steamed Vegetable Buns ("cai bao zi"). Since I know either the words or appropriate hand gestures for the numbers, I was feeling quite self-sufficient. The glitch, of course came when they thought that I was ordering 5 chinese dollars worth of buns (about 15 buns), instead of just 5 buns, so I ended up with food for an army and no way to back out of the deal. Oh well, at least I have lunch for tomorrow and some more to share!

Most everything is very inexpensive here. Those 5 chinese dollars worth of buns cost about 80 US cents. A full dinner at a very nice restaurant is generally about 2 or 3 US dollars.

Today (Saturday) we took part in a festival for foreign students of all subjects studying in Nanjing. There were some of us from Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, as well as from other universities in the city. Students come here to study from all over the world. About a third of the crowd were military officers from many African, South East Asian, and some Middle Eastern countries.

Last night Tamara (a classmate from OCOM) and I walked around town for a while. We found a park with a section of the old wall that was built around the city 1,000 years ago. We were attracted to the park, since it sounded like there was a concert going on, but what we found were 3 older men sitting in the gate (like a tunnel through the wall 25 feet long) with a karaoke machine and massive speakers. It was quite the scene!

As a follow-up to the 2-hour long foot massage that I mentioned previously, Wednesday we decided to check out the spa, where for about $15 you can soak in a hot tub and sauna for as long as you like, and then you get a 2-hour long divine full body massage. I'm hoping to return back to the states much more relaxed than I've been the past 3 years!