Gourmet food = yum

For June 1

I love China. Today, China provided me with a four-course gourmet meal for about $14 US dollars. After our move (I like my new dorm much better--it has air conditioning), a group of us headed to SOHO to a wonderful little place called Time Cafe, featured in one of the many magazines I've collected. It was voted Best Lunch Set Menu by the editors of "that's Beijing." It was further than we expected but luckily for us SOHO is known for its amazing architecture so the cab ride turned into a lovely air conditioned tour of the city. One of the many things under construction are two leaning buildings which are ultimately supposed to come together; Will informed us it was an architectural feat that has never been attempted before. It should be amazing to see when completed.

But to the meal. We ordered red wine and, for me, started off with an asparagus salad with quail eggs and parmesan flakes. Then we got vegetable soup and bread with the most delicious spread I've ever had. I'm going to make it a life goal to figure out what's in it and replicate the hell out of it. Moving right along, for my main course I had halibut with zucchini noodles on a bed of mashed potatos in some kind of yummy sauce. Les, you'd like that. Most of the boys got steak. Paul, you'd like that. Desert was a very light vanilla flan-type sweet with fresh mango on top presented in champagne glasses. The portions were small (and of course beautifully presented) but added up to the perfect amount of making you comfortably satiated. Did I mention this was about $14 US dollars? Good food two days in a row. I'm going to be so spoiled when I get back to the states.

I also met my first sketchy Chinese person tonight. And it was a 'she.' I was biking back to my dorm when I stopped at a light. This woman approached me asking for Tsinghua Univ. in Chinese. I told her I was American and she proceeded to speak very good English. She said she was looking for Tsinghua so I told her I was going that way and I'd give her a ride. Shaky at first, especially with on-coming traffic not stopping for us, I thought for sure she'd abandon ship, but held on she did. She proceeded to tell me she was trying to find her boyfriend, somthing about 'together for five years but he didn't love her.' He called her from Tsinghua or something and she had had a lot of beer. Okay lady. Where does he live? Tsinghua is really big. Where are you going? Tsinghua is that way. I thought you didn't know where it was, but I live on North gate and I'll take you that far. There are lots of student dorms there, maybe you can find him there. What's your name? Caroline (I was going to give McFarland as my last name if she asked...). When we got closer, I told her I'd take her to my front desk so she could possibly find out more information and she declined, saying she was too shy. But let's talk Chinese and English to each other one day and what's your number? Oh, I don't know it off the top of my head (this is true). Well, here's my phone number and e-mail address. Call me sometime. Okay, sure. Good luck. I don't know what just happened. But it was creepy.