Tize took us for a walk around the city. We walked to the main street that branches to the market.
Everybody was staring at me. The vast majority of people here have never seen a foreigner. Some followed us around for a while, some did the "double take", and some people inside the stores stopped everything they were doing to stand at the storefront to stare.
We went into a temple. The term "temple" can be confusing around here, as society is mostly secular, but they do build temples to commemorate people and events. This one is for the the local people who participated and died in the communist revolution.
We walked over to the main square and watched the old folks play Chinese chess.
We went back home for lunch. Sida kept his word, and the food he made was much better than the food we had at the restaurant yesterday. We played cards for a bit and took a nap.
Let's role back a couple of days: right when we got here, Julia got a phone call from her mom. She said Julia and I should cook a meal for everyone to show gratitude for their hospitality. We don't need to worry about anything because she packed the ingredients for us in Tize's suitcase.
Now, there are two problems here. For starters, we don't mind doing it, but we generally don't like it when decisions are made for us (and you know how a mother-daughter relationship can take that notion up a notch), and second, the packed ingredients were two packs of pasta, two cans of tomatos, Italian salad dressing, and a can of chicken breasts - not what we would have picked. Anyway, it looks like we're making pasta. When we came to peace with the idea, we decided to upgrade our dish with some fresh ingredients from the market.
Back to today, Sida volunteered to go with us so that the vendors won't rip us off. We got a nice fresh piece of pork, some tomatos, cucumbers, onions, and red sweet peppers, and a bottle of some really nice rice liquor.
We went back home, took a nap, and started cooking. You can't get ground meat here, so Sida ground our meat for us with a butcher knife. We fried some onions, added the pork, and then we were ready to add the canned tomatoes. There's no can opener. The pork was getting over cooked. I lowered the fire while Sida was hacking the cans with a knife. Ergugu noticed the fire was low and turned it up. I turned it back down. "Oh, low heat!" she said in awe and Mandarin. The water for the pasta was boiling. Dagugu turned the stove off. I turned it back on. We added the tomatoes to the pork. Mali, who somehow was also in the kitchen that really can't hold more than two people, ran outside to report to anyone who wasn't in the kitchen, which according to my math was no one: "they are cooking the pork with tomatoes!"
We served them the pasta along with some Israeli salad, which they found even more confusing, except for Sida who enjoyed it. Sanda started another drinking duel with me, which ended poorly for him. Then Sanda took us to another place where we could take a shower, and called it a day.
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