Sick, Bikes, Food and Coffee

 It's funny cuz after I had been back for about two weeks I called all my family and told them how great I was and was very healthy and just went on and on. The next day I got hit with some sort of stomach bug that just tore up my stomach. Could barely eat for a week and when I did start eating again my stomach totally rebelled. While I was writhing in pain on my bed, my good friend told me I should take Chinese medicine. She said, “Its better than Western medicine cuz its more natural”, so I told her, “And Westerners would say Western medicine is better than Chinese medicine!” Its interesting how you can find culture everywhere. I ended up taking it, more for the experience, it did actually help (I think), but it was nasty. I had to swallow about 30 tiny brown balls with warm water. Eeeggh. Then about two days after feeling fine I got hit with a head cold...still battling that one!

So as I mentioned in my last blog I was looking for a bike. Well, I got hooked up pretty well in my opinion. I had a budget, but when I moved to this new city of mine all the bikes were way above my budget. So I was gunna bight my lip and suck it up. Luckily I didn't have to, I ended up finding a used bike, for the price I wanted! I've ridden it around some and it works great.

During this last week I've also gotten to try an abundance of new food. As I briefly mentioned in my last blog, the food here is different. And I've heard it was better. I wanted to deny it, I wanted Xian to be wonderful and the best (as a true Xianren would want), but if I'm gunna be honest, I think the food here is way better. First of all, there are way more options. Second, it cheaper. Third, the taste is very good. One reason I've heard for there being more options is because this city has so much cultural diversity. It seems its about 1/3 Tibetan, 1/3 Hui Chinese (a minority group that is usually Muslim) and 1/3 Han Chinese (the majority in China). Which means we have about 3 times the amount of local options than we did in Xian (which is Han mostly, except for a small portion of the city that has Hui Chinese). Xian, I love you, but the food is better here.

One other thing that has become a major component of my life is coffee. Now as a true Seattle-ite, that really should not surprise any readers, but I mean more than coffee, I mean environment as well. For those who do not know, I am taking two online college classes. It started about a month ago, and we still do not have internet in the house I'm staying, which usually means I spend about 2 full days at a coffee shop because I need the internet to turn in my homework. This city has a lot of coffee shops, but there are two very popular ones, GreenHouse and Taza. They are both on the same street and are both about a 30 minute walk from my house and they both offer WiFi. Taza has a stronger WiFi connection and was started by a local, so its cool to support that business. GreenHouse is also great though, the way they have decorated and the feel you get is awesome. I'm more impacted by my environment, plus GreenHouse offers drip coffee, which Taza does not, so I've been going to GreenHouse, which means I have built pretty strong relationship there already! All the waitresses and waiters know me, I've met the owners and so on. Just cuz I'm there about 20 hours a week. Anyways, today I had a skype date so I went to Taza for the internet connection, when I passed GreenHouse one of the waitresses waived to me....I felt like I was betraying them!