Pork dumplings, Rockville tour, Sushi Damo

Hello, all! Significantly better day than yesterday, I'm happy to report. :)

This morning I woke up at 8:30 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I just got out of bed. That was when I came in here and started my previous entry. We were supposed to have a pancake breakfast, free, complete with blueberry and chocolate chip, starting at 9:30. Annie told me that she wanted to sleep in until 10:30 and I told her that we'd bring her some pancakes. Michelle and I went downstairs a little after that time and found that the clubroom was locked. There was a sign on the door saying that one of the people from Fenestra was supposed to come open the door for us, but they were delayed, so the time was pushed back to 10am.

About 10 after, Michelle and I started to head back down. We ran into some other Chinese students in the hall who just came up from downstairs and said that it still wasn't open. So we just decided to wait until Annie was up and we could all go down together.

I got Annie up a little after 10:30, though she said she'd been awake for a while, she was just lazing in bed. She got up and got ready and we actually lost track of time just sitting in the living room and talking. It was about 11:30 by the time we went downstairs to check again. This time, there was no sign or anything, so we figured we missed it. Darn!

Annie insisted that she could make us some pancakes, but we didn't have any baking soda or salt, so we decided to try these frozen pork dumplings that her father had bought at a Chinese market not far from here. It took the water FOREVER to boil, but they ended up being REALLY good. They came in a bag of 30 for $3, and we had some leftover, so we're going to be eating those a lot, I expect. During the cooking and the meal, we discussed food and decided to cook on the weekends. Annie and Michelle will try to teach me how to make Chinese food and I'll try to teach them some Southern recipes.

Also, something that struck me as a little bizarre--they don't use dishwashers. Apparently this is an Asian thing? I don't know, but I find dirty dishes disgusting and have always hated washing dishes, so I'm all about some dishwashers. So I taught them how to load it this morning and once we get enough dishes in it, I'll teach them how to use the detergent and turn it on.

After lunch, we had a few minutes to chat some more before we went on the Rockville bus tour. Instead of an official tour, it was really just the students from Fenestra who wanted to go see where the things are in our area. We just took a bus line and ran to the end of it, then ran back. Amazingly, the bus driver was awesome and didn't charge us any fare. A couple of interesting people sat next to me. One woman, when she got on the bus, instructed a couple of the students up front to get up for an elderly woman who was getting on. I was immediately impressed. "A Southerner!" I thought. The woman herself was standing. A female student gave up her seat. The woman then smiled at the boys who were still sitting and said that now they should give up their seats to her. I was even more impressed. I am a complete believer in chivalry. The student said that she was okay and wanted to stand, so they didn't end up getting up.

But a little bit longer down the ride, Michelle turned to me and asked if she should let the outspoken woman sit down because she had two bags that looked heavy and I told her that yeah, it was probably a good idea and would win her a lot of points. The woman sat next to me and we talked a lot. I found out that she's trying to get her Bachelor's in Business Management for the fifth time right now. Before, she kept having to drop out because people in her family kept getting sick and she had to take care of them. She told me that at one time, she had six jobs simultaneously. It was just very inspiring to talk to her, and she wished us all luck on completing the program.

A few stops later, an elderly Chinese woman got on and sat next to me. Well...she was American, but both of her parents were Chinese. She was very insistent that she was not Chinese. She struck me as being a very conservative Republican, saying that she went to Bush's second inauguration and she cared nothing about going to Obama's and that she was tired of DC and wanted to get out. She did tell us about some cool events happening, though. On January 30, they're having a farewell party for the panda cub Tai Shan at the National Zoo from 11am-3pm. Peking Acrobats are also coming to the Strathmore sometime in February. I'll have to look up the exact date again. However, the woman was also kind of...not mentally sound, I guess? She mumbled to herself when she wasn't talking to me and she repeated herself over and over and over. I mean, after telling me about fifteen times in a row about the zoo party, she wrote it down on a strip of paper and gave it to me. I folded it to put it on my purse and she took it back from me and folded it another way. It was just strange. I am glad to know that there are people willing to chat here. I'm a Southerner, I'm comfortable chatting with strangers.

After the tour, we came by the library to check out the DVDs and different selections of books they had available. They actually have a long shelf of Chinese books that thrilled Michelle. I looked for Japanese. I found Vietnamese, Korean, Russian...no Japanese. It was disappointing, but I also didn't look very thoroughly. Annie was getting a headache because it was so stuffy, so we decided to head back to the room. Before we left, though, we found a little niche in the wall that had a bunch of flyers and pamphlets about stuff going on. I pointed out to Michelle that she should take the pamphlet on human rights back to China. They had a map of the town square that's really nice, too.

Came back to the room and kind of chilled for a couple of hours before going to dinner. A friend of Annie's and her roommate came with us. Connie goes to Washington University with Annie, and Sarah is in the International Affairs program with me. Sarah's also traveled really extensively and speaks several languages. She's a poli-sci major, but not one of the annoying ones. She's obviously very serious about her work here.

We decided to go to a sushi place that also had Japanese food, Sushi Damo. The sushi was inexpensive, but if you got the Japanese entrees, it was kind of pricey. Since I don't eat sushi, I got some chicken katsu (torikatsu?) that was delicious. It was really, authentically Japanese. Our waiter was also authentically Japanese and very hot. When I was explaining to everyone what the different things were, he came over and asked if I wanted to apply for a server position. ♥ He was very cute.

After dinner, we just came back to the room and hung out. Michelle's still a bit jet-lagged, so she's very sleepy and going to bed now. I'm getting tired myself. Tomorrow Annie and Michelle want to go down and explore the Mall. I'll see how I feel tomorrow to see if I want to go with them. I've seen the Mall a lot of times, it's a lot of walking, and it's also crowded, so. May not happen. I could just enjoy the time to myself. But we'll see, because I really do enjoy my roomies and love spending time with them.

Alright, I think I'm going to go do some pleasure reading now. Hoping that tomorrow is as awesome a day as today!