13: All by Myself

Aaron left about an hour ago to go back to Atlanta. I’m all packed for Beijing; I don’t really have anything left to do.

My flight on Thursday was changed. My itinerary is as follows:

WASH/DULLES to BEIJING departing Thursday, January 14

UNITED  897

Depart: WASH/DULLES 12:23 PM Arrive: BEIJING 10:15 PM Seat(s):

STOPOVER Equip: PLANE CHANGE AT NRT MP miles: 8082

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The stopover is in Tokyo.

Time to kill some time…

12: Chinese Cooking for Dummies

Tonight, I opened my Chinese Cooking for Dummies cookbook and decided that it was time to attempt Chinese cuisine. Big mistake.

The goal: Cook Shanghai fried noodles and potstickers for six people in the course of two hours.

The chefs:

Aaron and Burger

The result: 3 hours in a kitchen, 12 shredded potstickers, 31 really good potstickers, lots of Shanghai fried noodles, a half pound of extra plain Shanghai noodles, and a huge mess.  I’m exhausted!

This was a good experiment though. In reading through a majority of the cookbook, it made me aware of just how much sesame and nuts the Chinese use; I’m in trouble (for those of you who don’t know, I have an anaphylactic reaction to both foods). I will hopefully have my own kitchen so that I can learn to cook for myself. I won’t be able to go out to restaurants until I know the language better. Living in China will be quite the change.

11: Lazing About

Since Israel has been cancelled, Aaron and I haven’t had much to do. Luckily, my brother got a PS3 for the holidays so we’ve been goofing off on Dragon Age and Fable: The Lost Chapters. For someone who’s not a gamer, the past few down/game days have been really nice.

Also, since I used to live in this area (Northern Virginia), I’ve caught up with a few friends! I spent about three hours with Ting in the mall and then had a three hour dinner with the Willmotts. Catching up is nice and I’ll be lucky enough to have some friends in the area while I’m home for the summer .

That’s all for now. Oh, and for those of you who haven’t seen Avatar, it isn’t overrated. Think Pocahontas with blue people à la George Lucas. IMAX 3D if you can .