Rocking the Language Pledge

Today at twelve noon we took our language pledge, which means no more English until the end of the semester, in May. So far it has not been so bad.

Amusing Uses of Circumlocution:
Nina: "I am going to look for my favorite song [at the bootleg DVD store]."
Emily: "What is your favorite song?"
Nina: "You don't like my favorite song. It is ... um... 'Wushi Kuai [50 dollars].' No, it's 'Wushi jiao [50 cents].'"
Emily: "Wushi jiao... Oh! Oh, yes! My favorite song is 'They Might Be Very Large.'"
*
Emily: "Rice is white, this is ... " (holding up a piece of egg with chopsticks)
Erica: "That's egg."
(I was trying to find out the word for "yellow.")
*
Emily: "My eyes are very uncomfortable. I really would like to take my eye-things and put them in another place."

This morning I had my very first solo expedition in Beijing, albeit a very tame one- I went across the street to our usual breakfast place for a nice hot glass of soymilk and a rice ball. Tian a, I do love the hot soymilk. So mild and milky and Chinese! The rice ball is surprisingly good for something containing brown pickled eggs and what seems to be some sort of jerky, and it certainly fills you up. Plus it's much healthier than the "deep fried ghosts" as we call the doughnut-like confections people like to have for breakfast here. (Doughnut-like, except that they are not sweet. You can dip them in your soymilk or a brown hoisin-style sauce of some sort.)

Lunch with Nina and her very nice group of friends at Yi Er San, which is quickly becoming a fan favorite. Their jiaozi are very good and they have vegetarian ones, which is nice, since I'm eating a ridiculous amount of pork here. Nina wants to include sweet and sour pork at every meal, and I think I'm going to have a heart attack. Yi Er San also has a spectacular dish with potatoes, eggplant, and peppers, which I love, and a very tasty tomato and egg dish. Plus they brought us a bowl of seafood broth with cabbage of their own accord, because we had ordered a lot of "yang" foods and it would unbalance our internal heat. Talk about service!

Grooving to "They Might Be Very Big," who pack so much beautiful delicious English into each song and who are as comforting as reading Michael Chabon while cuddling Lancaster and eating noodles with cottage cheese, as far as I'm concerned.

Cheers.