Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Lea slept through the night last night. She went to sleep at about 6:45 and didn't wake up until almost 8:00 this morning. I'm really liking this!!
Today was Mommy-Daughter Day. Daddy was not feeling so well today. I think it was a combination of things...the food and his stomach, the hard bed and his back, and the fact that we were going shopping today may have done him in. So, we all had breakfast together and again Lea ate everything that came near her, including some off of my plate. After breakfast, Daddy retired to the room and Mommy and Lea headed out for the park.
It's called the People's Park and it was absolutely beautiful. It's right in the middle of the city with buildings and high-rises everywhere, but when you enter the gates to the park, it's like you're in another world. There were beautiful flowers everywhere you looked and the decorations were just stunning.
The decorations from the 60th Anniversary Celebrations were still up and they were very elaborate. I took 60 photos at the park in about 2 hours. We met quite a few people in the park. Everyone likes to "practice" their English when they see Americans. They also love to have their pictures taken with Americans. We definitely attract a lot of attention here.
The park is intended as a place for people to exercise. Lots of people walking and doing tai chi. They have exercise equipment that resembles the "jungle gyms" that we see in parks and playgrounds for children, but these are for adults to exercise on. It was fascinating to watch. There were mostly older, retired people and grandparents with grandchildren or younger women with their children. Lea slept most of the time again. I think 10:00am is her naptime. She woke up happy and hungry as usual. I gave her a bottle and then we were off to the shopping district.
We drove through what I would call China's 5th Avenue with lots of high-end shops, shoe stores, bridal boutiques, and clothing stores. Then we parked the tour bus and walked through the "flee market" section. They were smaller shops with really good prices...10 Yuan for a shirt (that's about $1.47). I bought Lea a cute pair of shoes for about $7. They are way too big for her now, but they were the smallest size she had in that style. She'll grow into them one day.
We decided to head back to the hotel to check in on Daddy after our shopping trip so we opted out of lunch and just ate in the room. After we ate, Lea took her afternoon nap and Randy walked up to the store with one of the other mom's in our group. He just went for more water and to take pictures of the grocery store. We just had to document the inside of the store. It's like nothing I've ever seen before.
Later that night Randy was craving a good ole American meal so he decided to try the Tenderloin Steak on the room service menu...
"Now the price for a room-service steak in Nanchang is about the same as your average Western Sizzler in the US. So I decided to go in, for 98 Yuan (about 15 bucks), a "New Zealand Tenderloin" sounded down right mouth-watering good. I couldn't wait. I called room service, the waitress answered the phone in mandarin and immediately handed it to the "English-speaking" waiter after hearing my English babble. His English wasn't bad and he asked how I liked the steak cooked - a pleasant surprise - to which I responded without thinking, "medium rare." I'm thinking this is going to be great.
About a half-hour later the doorbell rings and a small Chinese woman is there with not one but 2 pretty good-looking steaks on a platter with fries and steamed broccoli. In a separate dish is some mushroom sauce. Not bad. I cut into the steak and it's so rare it's actually cold in the middle. The very outside is brown, everything else is raw. Not rare, but raw. Now I have a decision to make: do I try to eat it, which wouldn't be easy - even if you like steak rare, or do I throw the dice and call room service to see if I can get them to keep it on the burner a little longer? I came down somewhere in the middle.
First, I tried just sucking it up and eating the steak as is. After about three bites I decided I wasn't going to be able to eat both filets in this condition. Next, I called room service and explained my problem. The waiter was extremely apologetic and someone came to the room immediately and took the whole plate back down to the kitchen. Problem solved? Not so much. After about another 30 minutes the young lady returned with a whole new plate (I had already eaten the steamed broccoli from the first plate) with what appeared to be an extra couple of pieces of maki role, but with ham in the middle. I've eaten a fair amount of sushi in my day and have never seen *ham* in the middle of any role, anywhere. I pushed those off to the side, ate the new steamed broccoli, a couple of the fries - which weren't bad - and cut open one of the new steaks. Raw...just like before. This begs the question of what the waiter thought he was fixing when I called to complain. Apparently, he didn't get that I wanted the same steak cooked a little longer, so he took the shotgun approach to trouble-shooting and rebooted the meal hoping to get lucky and fix whatever I was jabbering about. I ate both steaks. I felt a little queasy, but at least I was full."
My meal, on the other hand, was wonderful. I had asparagus and orange salad. Moral of the story...go vegetarian and you never have to worry about undercooked meat!
Lea slept through the night last night. She went to sleep at about 6:45 and didn't wake up until almost 8:00 this morning. I'm really liking this!!
Today was Mommy-Daughter Day. Daddy was not feeling so well today. I think it was a combination of things...the food and his stomach, the hard bed and his back, and the fact that we were going shopping today may have done him in. So, we all had breakfast together and again Lea ate everything that came near her, including some off of my plate. After breakfast, Daddy retired to the room and Mommy and Lea headed out for the park.
It's called the People's Park and it was absolutely beautiful. It's right in the middle of the city with buildings and high-rises everywhere, but when you enter the gates to the park, it's like you're in another world. There were beautiful flowers everywhere you looked and the decorations were just stunning.
The decorations from the 60th Anniversary Celebrations were still up and they were very elaborate. I took 60 photos at the park in about 2 hours. We met quite a few people in the park. Everyone likes to "practice" their English when they see Americans. They also love to have their pictures taken with Americans. We definitely attract a lot of attention here.
The park is intended as a place for people to exercise. Lots of people walking and doing tai chi. They have exercise equipment that resembles the "jungle gyms" that we see in parks and playgrounds for children, but these are for adults to exercise on. It was fascinating to watch. There were mostly older, retired people and grandparents with grandchildren or younger women with their children. Lea slept most of the time again. I think 10:00am is her naptime. She woke up happy and hungry as usual. I gave her a bottle and then we were off to the shopping district.
We drove through what I would call China's 5th Avenue with lots of high-end shops, shoe stores, bridal boutiques, and clothing stores. Then we parked the tour bus and walked through the "flee market" section. They were smaller shops with really good prices...10 Yuan for a shirt (that's about $1.47). I bought Lea a cute pair of shoes for about $7. They are way too big for her now, but they were the smallest size she had in that style. She'll grow into them one day.
We decided to head back to the hotel to check in on Daddy after our shopping trip so we opted out of lunch and just ate in the room. After we ate, Lea took her afternoon nap and Randy walked up to the store with one of the other mom's in our group. He just went for more water and to take pictures of the grocery store. We just had to document the inside of the store. It's like nothing I've ever seen before.
Later that night Randy was craving a good ole American meal so he decided to try the Tenderloin Steak on the room service menu...
"Now the price for a room-service steak in Nanchang is about the same as your average Western Sizzler in the US. So I decided to go in, for 98 Yuan (about 15 bucks), a "New Zealand Tenderloin" sounded down right mouth-watering good. I couldn't wait. I called room service, the waitress answered the phone in mandarin and immediately handed it to the "English-speaking" waiter after hearing my English babble. His English wasn't bad and he asked how I liked the steak cooked - a pleasant surprise - to which I responded without thinking, "medium rare." I'm thinking this is going to be great.
About a half-hour later the doorbell rings and a small Chinese woman is there with not one but 2 pretty good-looking steaks on a platter with fries and steamed broccoli. In a separate dish is some mushroom sauce. Not bad. I cut into the steak and it's so rare it's actually cold in the middle. The very outside is brown, everything else is raw. Not rare, but raw. Now I have a decision to make: do I try to eat it, which wouldn't be easy - even if you like steak rare, or do I throw the dice and call room service to see if I can get them to keep it on the burner a little longer? I came down somewhere in the middle.
First, I tried just sucking it up and eating the steak as is. After about three bites I decided I wasn't going to be able to eat both filets in this condition. Next, I called room service and explained my problem. The waiter was extremely apologetic and someone came to the room immediately and took the whole plate back down to the kitchen. Problem solved? Not so much. After about another 30 minutes the young lady returned with a whole new plate (I had already eaten the steamed broccoli from the first plate) with what appeared to be an extra couple of pieces of maki role, but with ham in the middle. I've eaten a fair amount of sushi in my day and have never seen *ham* in the middle of any role, anywhere. I pushed those off to the side, ate the new steamed broccoli, a couple of the fries - which weren't bad - and cut open one of the new steaks. Raw...just like before. This begs the question of what the waiter thought he was fixing when I called to complain. Apparently, he didn't get that I wanted the same steak cooked a little longer, so he took the shotgun approach to trouble-shooting and rebooted the meal hoping to get lucky and fix whatever I was jabbering about. I ate both steaks. I felt a little queasy, but at least I was full."
My meal, on the other hand, was wonderful. I had asparagus and orange salad. Moral of the story...go vegetarian and you never have to worry about undercooked meat!
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