Interesting things about China, and Hot Pot

By the way, I have this same blog on Wordpress, but I haven't been able to access the site at all here. One of the guys has bypassed the firewall and can get to it, so I need to post a note there saying that THIS is the only blog that will be updated, at least for now. Unfortunately, some of the other cast members linked to my wordpress blog instead of this one.

Interesting things:

You can't drink the water! This means brushing your teeth from a water bottle, like when camping. You also can't eat fruits without peels, because they will have been in water. Fruits with peels are safe. Since we can't drink tap water, hotels provide us with 2 bottles of water each day, and we supplement by buying our own from the Carrefoure (Walmart) next door, If you buy bottled water, you have to check the lids and make sure they're sealed, because some places refill their bottles with tap water!

More sanitary issues: apparently porous wooden chopsticks are often reused (and not always washed) in restaurants, so it was recommended that we purchase and use our own chopsticks! I just did that last night.

Cars: Cars don't care about hitting pedestrians! I wonder if the laws are different, and it isn't always the driver's fault for hitting a pedestrian. While we were walking home from rehearsal today, we saw a young woman almost get hit by a car that didn't stop, even though we had a walk signal. I fear for my life every time I cross a street.

Pollution: the sky is disgusting. Need I say more? I'm looking out the window right now, at 3:15 p.m., and it's sunny with an ugly, hazy fog of pollution all around. People smoke everywhere, including in the hallway waiting for the elevator (but it's not allowed IN the elevator!). During our children's music rehearsal this morning, the music director actually had to shoo away some local people who were standing outside smoking near us, because we could smell it inside!

Today we decided to return to the tasty lunch place that we discovered yesterday, for some more Kung Pao chicken. We acquired a few tagalongs on the way, so instead of just the 4 of us, in walked 20 of us! The look on the proprietor's face was priceless. I'm not sure if he was happy for the business or just disturbed by all of us. Unfortunately, by sharing our secret, we also lost the speed of the meal -- our food didn't come for at least 35 minutes, and then we had less than ten minutes to gobble our food and return to rehearsal for a little press filming. So much for sharing good restaurants! Ha! Never again!

Fraulein Froylein Frolein. We are having some pronunciation issues with that word. The correct pronunciation is Froy-line! The script doesn't have the umlauts over the A (and neither does my blog), but that's how it is! Argh. I feel like a brat correcting people, but it's worse that we are hearing 3 or 4 different versions of the word.

We are still having trouble adjusting to the time difference! I thought that after the long flight and staying awake for what felt like days on end, I'd sleep like a log Sunday night and wake up completely adjusted on Monday. Not so: the trend is to fall asleep quickly, then wake up in the middle of the night (I don't look at my clock because I don't want to know how little sleep I've gotten!) and stay awake until it's time to get up. This has happened to nearly everyone, every night so far. I have no idea when we're actually going to adjust, but we're functioning surprisingly well! We all start crashing in the afternoon, have a groggy dinner, then go right to bed.

Last night we experienced Hot Pot for dinner, which was interesting. The restaurant was right in the mall next to our hotel, and it was pretty classy I guess. When we put our sweaters on the backs of our chairs, they slipped guards down over them to "protect" them. Hot Pot is an interesting thing: each person orders a bowl of soup of their choice of flavor: chicken, kelp, spicy, etc. You have a burner on the table at each place setting, and they put the soup on the burner and turn it on until it's boiling. Then you order "fillers," such as meats, mushrooms, vegetables, or noodles. You put the raw meat (or whatever it is) into the hot broth and let it cook, then remove it and eat it in dipping sauce. Then you drink the broth by itself! Well, it was an interesting experience, but truly a lot of work to go through for not much of a meal (essentially soup). And we ate so late we were all totally exhausted. We did discover some funny little berries that were in the soup. If you ate one, it made your tongue turn numb and tingle! It seemed dangerous, but it was fun.