first weekend adventures

The class finished their exam, and just as planned, we all headed out to have "dim sum" with the student who was leaving Friday evening. He is Korean and was able to pick up on one of the (fully) Chinese menus the word dim sum. So we all sat around a table together and asked what everyone wanted. The consensus was simply, "Let's all get dim sum."

This is what ensued....another student attempted to speak in Mandarin (he's from mainland China) and not Cantonese (what the people mostly speak in Hong Kong), and so many of the wait staff ended up coming to our table to attempt to find out what we wanted.



Whereas we thought we were getting dim sum, what came to our table was nothing close. First to arrive were 6 sandwiches on rolls. The sandwiches had pork, chicken and I think beef. We all soon realized we were NOT getting dim sum. What came next was even more of a shocker.....french toast arrived on our table!



Laughter erupted and we all couldn't understand what happened. The waitress came over and the student who ordered for us tried to explain what happened. Even though it wasn't what we expected - nor what we wanted - we enjoyed our sandwiches, french toast, and time together.

Speaking of, if any of you is hungry, let me know what you want off this menu, and I'll be sure to bring it home to the US with me...



This is all of us eating....


We then decided to go get ice cream cones at McDonalds. We all walked to Citi One, the mall close to campus. Along the way, I took some shots of life taking place around me:














I could just sit at City One all evening and take pictures of the people and things they were doing. Maybe I'll go do that at some point. A bunch of people decided to go back to ICS, but Mark, Corinna, and I decided to go exploring. I made the suggestion to go to Newtown Plaza (the "big" mall) and so we boarded the bus and went to the mall. Mark and Corinna hadn't been there before, so it was fun to roam around. I kept talking about wanting what I called dumplings, and Corinna wasn't sure what I was envisioning. We found City Super, the supermarket in the mall. We decided to walk around and look at everything. What we stumbled upon at the beginning was a variety of fruit.... durian (a really bad smelling fruit), pomelo (looks like a grapefruit, but not bitter), dragonfruit, mangosteens (my favorite from Thailand...excited to buy some here), and lots of others.

For a good peek at the fruit of Hong Kong, I googled "Hong Kong fruit" and came across someone else's blog, who posted some good pics (and some funny anecdotes) about each of the main fruits:

http://www.sunnysideuprecipes.com/2009/07/tropical-fruits-in-hong-kong.html

But then we ventured into the meat section of the store and saw this:



We continued along and found what I was thinking of...my dumplings. Sure enough, next to it, we found what Corinna was looking for...and they were called buns.
We bought some of each and continued on. We checked out, and on our way out, came across this "display" - people making these pastry-like items...you could get them with bean paste, custard, and a bunch of other things within. I enjoyed watching them make them...they kinda looked like cupcake tins, but they'd fill half the tin with the mixture, let it bake, then add the filling, then put an already baked half on top, to form a type of sandwich, sealed together. Corinna decided to get one (with custard) and we 3 decided it was one of the most delicious treats we've had. Ever. We are definitely going to go back for more. I'll be sure to take pictures next time.

The next morning (Saturday), we had lunch together (so we could eat our buns and dumplings), and along with it had veggies (peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes - of course, I didn't eat the tomatoes), and Corinna cooked up some sweet potatoes. We sliced up some oranges and called it a meal. It was delicious! We pulled some MacGuyver moves too...had to figure out how to steam the buns with limited cooking supplies. So we boiled some water in a pot, then took the drainer, put the buns in, and inserted the drainer into the pot to hopefully let the steam cook the buns. Oh, did we laugh at ourselves.

Here's a pic (from the web) of buns and dumplings:

Buns:


Dumplings:


Saturday and all of today (Sunday) it's been non-stop raining, so we canceled our outing to the market. We're planning to go next weekend. I decided to catch up on some emailing today, so came down to the computer lab to do some work. I'll probably go to the Park-n-Shop a bit later to get some food for tonight, as well as some items for the week.

Hope you had a good weekend!