When I moved home this summer, the first thing I did was redo my room. I wish I had taken some before pictures so that I could share the transformation. I painted walls and furniture and hung new pictures etc. total makeover. Also, I started working--but mostly evenings. Lately, during my days my hands have been itching for a new project (it's been too hot to go to the beach). I looked at my photos from my film photo class and was really missing doing darkroom stuff. I might look into getting some supplies to at least develop my own film (I have a scanner). We'll see about that. Actually, right now I have a headache and don't want to type. I just want to upload a picture of my latest project:

My dad taught me how to use his lathe and I made this pen. I added the irregular contour on purpose--gave the pen a little personality. I might make another one. The turning part was my favorite. I'm not so sure I enjoyed the saw or the drilling the hole down the center of the piece of wood. Too much potential for harm for me.

Explorations in Baking

So one reason I am doing this right now is because I have a huge paper due on Tuesday which I do not want to write. The other reason is that I thought it would be a fun personal project--it will be more fun this summer when I have people to eat everything I bake.

I want to come up with some of my own recipes--or just try out some new ones I've never tried before. I will post the recipes, pictures, and some hopefully raving reviews.

I would really like to get a book that explains the chemistry of baking. Not like a textbook, but something simple so that I can understand how the ingredients interact and what ingredients I need to give the right texture and rise etc. Since I don't have the best understanding of that right now, I just adjusted one of my normal cookie recipes for my first project.

I had an old banana sitting around and I really wanted to bake something, so I thought--"I like chocolate chip banana bread, I like cookies, what about banana chocolate chip cookies?"

Here's the recipe:

Preheat oven to 375 F

Mix together dry ingredients in a separate bowl and set off to the side:

3/4 cup white flour

3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (I like to use this, it adds a little texture, and makes you feel better about eating cookies)

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer beat together until smooth:

1/2 butter--room temperature

1/3 C white sugar

1/2 C Brown sugar

Add vanilla and egg, beat until smooth:

1tsp vanilla

1 egg

Blend in pre-mashed banana:

1 very ripe mashed banana

Stir in dry ingredients

Stir in chocolate chips

1 C semisweet chocolate chips

Refirgerate dough for a few hours

this step is not absolutely necessary, but if you have the time go ahead and do it. It keeps the cookies from going completely flat in the oven.

Bake at 375F

7 mins for a soft cookie

longer if you like you cookies well done

If you like oatmeal cookies, add 1 1/2 cups of oats

the banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough (what a mouthful!)

I also tried adding peanut butter--I will get an exact recipe for you if you want that

p.s. I promise better pictures in the future, I know these ones are terrible!

I split the dough up and tried a few mix-ins. I labeled them for my roommate so she wouldn't try to eat a cookie that she was suspecting to be simply chocolate-chip and get a strange surprise. In the end, I ended up with:

1. Peanut-butter filled banana chocolate chip cookies

2. Peanut butter banana chocolate chip cookies

3. Banana chocolate chip cookies

4. Oatmeal banana chocolate chip cookies.

Sensory Overload

In the morning we went to  Tiananmen square. They had on display in some building  Mao’s body in a crystal coffin. There were tons and tons of people in line to see the body.  They probably would wait hours and they get shuffled past the body in 10 seconds.  Stephen (our tour guide) said he thought the body was wax.

After we walked through Tiananmen Square we went to the Forbidden City. Every time I thought we were at the center of the city we enter a new part. It was-huge huge huge no idea it was going to be that big. This place was really sweet, see pictures later.

Behind the Forbidden City was a big beautiful gardens and hill. The hill was man made,  constructed from dirt dug out of the moat for the Forbidden City. At the top of the hill we could see all of the Forbidden city and a gorgeous view of Beijing. It is such a huge city! 13,000 million official resident, much more with tourists and non-official residents. There are so many apartment buildings. I will be happy when we get to Dalian cause this is pretty crazy! I took a video from the top of this hill and will post it as soon as a get a good internet connection.

We went to someone’s house  and we met a Cricket flight master. For real. I think you can you tube “cricket fighting” and find a video of it. But…in china YouTube is blocked! Also Biblegateway is blocked! I was trying to look up a verse on it earlier and it wouldn’t go to the website. Who knows what other sites are blocked…back to the cricket story (I’m sure I’ll have more to say on that other topic later). The man was a professional cricket fighter. He trained crickets. Knew all about where the best fighting crickets came from. Emperors would bet their concubines or houses on cricket fights. A premier fighting cricket could cost 10,000 yuan (about $1,300!!) and they only live for 100 days! They only fight in autumn.

Rickshaw ride got to see a little more of the residential side of the city

Lunch--delicious- at a local Beijing woman’s house. We didn’t get to talk to her, but she made some pretty good foood. We learned that doorways have threshold that you have to step over so that ghosts would not come in because the can only jump with two feet.

Our next stop was a tea house. The lady gave us lessons on various types of tea and how to prepare and drink them. Purple clay pot was cool. If you use it for two years then you can just put water in it and it should make tea because the clay absorbs the flavor of the tea.

Starbucks is the same price here as in America.  

Silk City is a multi-level indoor market with two levels of mens and womens clothes, another floor of silk items and tailors, a floor of bags, belts, and shoes, and a floor of jewelry. All merchandise except for maybe the silk stuff, was knock-off brand name stuff. There were tons of polo shirts and Abercrombie knock off. . There was yelling (imagine Chinese accent) “Hello beautiful lady “Gucci, Gucci" “You want polo shirt” “Hello“ “Hello” all at the same time! It was pretty overwhelming. I was trying to tell Carlee (one of the other Clemson students) a story but I couldn’t because I was so overwhelmed with everyone yelling at me. It was difficult just to look at the items because the sales ladies tried to hook you. Apparetnly the rule of thumb for the appropriate price to pay for the quoted price they give you on an object is 1/6! I think I did pretty well for myself in barttering. But the Clemson guys were really great at getting deals. Carlee was haggling with one lady and then decided that she didn’t want to buy the thing and left. The lady chased us down yelling and told Carlee she was crazy for not accepting the offer. “You crazy.” But really I know that lady would’ve been making a big profit on even that price. These people know how to guilt you into buying something, haha. Apparently, during the Olympics most of the tourists ended up paying half of the quoted price thinking that they made a good deal.  I only bought one thing there as a present, but we will be back in Beijing at the end of our trip and I would like to go back and take another look. They had a lot of nice dresses and skirts and everything else..

Dinner another nice round table meal

The hotel we are staying in is so fancy that there is even a bowling alley! So last night we went bowling. I ended up winning (but with a score of 121 haha) 

So since we have been here it has been pretty jammed packed with activities.

I have tons of pictures already but I am waiting until I have a good internet connection to put some up. It takes about 20 minutes or so for these pictures  to upload. It's hard to choose which ones to put in here, just know there are hundreds more.

Next post:

 A Palace and a Temple

 (you may have to wait a little while for this cause we check out of the hotel tomorrow and head to Dalian on the overnight train)

I am a hero.

warning I fell asleep while writing this, so I apologize for any gramatical errors...

Well at least for this first week I am here the days are going to be jam packed with activities. So I will try to put it in an easy to read hilight fashion. No gaurantee, I tend to ramble. What I am doing is keeping a journal on my computer and then I will copy and paste selected (usually most of it, save a few details) portions to the blog. 

One thing that is different about this trip so far than other trips is that I am truly a tourist. We go in groups everywhere,  even dinner. I think that I will have the opportunity to do some more non-touristy things when I get to Dalian. Dr. Miller said we get to spend a saturday with a Chinese family. 

This morning I woke up around 5 am to Dr. Miller snoring. I slept a little  bit after that, but not too much. I was able to call home on skype. It is pretty amazing that how that works. I talked to Matthew but mom and dad weren’t home and then I got  to talk to Dane! Breakfast had all sorts of food. It was pretty amazing how many different foods they offered. I just had cereal though. Haha.

After breakfast we loaded the bus and went to the Ming tombs. An interesting fact: The tour guide said that when new emperors came into power they would  destroy everything from the former emperor, sometimes even burial sites in order to  create the right fung sheia. The Ming tombs had a small museums with replications of relics found at the burial sites of other emperors. There were gold plates and bowls. And some of the most crazy head crown things that I have ever seen. One really cool thing was that the columns in the building were wooden and

 made from the trunk of one tree. It probably would’ve taken three people to hug that thing it was so big. And since this building was built 500 years ago and the trees came from far away, the way they transported them was interesting. They would cut a whole bunch down and then wait for the seasonal floods and float them down to where they needed them. 

Before we actually got to the wall we had to go to the commissioned tour guide jade factory and then to the “Friendship store” which was lunch and a quick tour of another factory/workshop. 

Pretty interesting to see the workshops, but that could be another whole post.

The Great Wall. So our tour guide told us if we could climb to the top of the portion of the great wall we were at we would prove ourselves heroes. Some sort of local tradition. It was an incredibly difficult climb. Haha. Millions of stairs, I should’ve been counting. In most of the pictures you see of the great wall its long and flat. We were climbing the part that was straight up. And not all the stairs the same height. But it was gorgeous and pretty crazy to think how this expansive thing was built so long ago. Our guide also said that he thinks it is a myth that you can see the Great Wall from outer space. Anyone know if that is true?  (http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html) 

There was also a crazy old man who followed us the whole  way. He was pretty entertaining though. 

Personal musing note: There were houses right next door for people who work at the Great Wall. Seems like a crazy existence to just work and live. But I guess I don’t really know what these people really do after work, do they get weekends? What’s important in their life? I don’t have the inside view. I just know how important church  and things outside of work is to my life. This is an incomplete thought, but I don’t really have time to finish it now.

On the drive back from the Great Wall we stopped and saw from a distance the Olympic Bird'ss Nest and the Water Cube!!! That thing is so sweet looking.

Dinner at a round table. That’s how most of the meals are here. Everyone sits at a round table and the food is put in the middle and then you can spin it around and get what you want. We have mostly had sort of sampler meals so far. Some really good stuff, some not so good. But I don’t think we have had anything really crazy yet. That’s all for now.

next post: sensory overload

The beginings of my China adventures

Getting There

Started at 4:30am Sunday May 10, after three hours of sleep, Dane drove me to the airport. Flew to JFK and had to sit around there eight hours until my flight to China (I’ll spare you the details of what I did for eight hours, but it wasn’t that exciting). Flight was roughly 14 hours….sooo long. IA few rows in front of me some lady had some sort of medical emergency. They had to clear out a row and lay her down on it and hook her up to some oxygen. I don’t really know what happened because all the doctors (who reported after the flight attendant made an announcement) were speaking in Chinese. Other than that incident it was a pretty uneventful flight. I slept most of it. But today my neck hurts sooo bad to try and turn it to the left, I’m blaming it on sleeping on the plane. An interesting thing is that my flight went  over the polar ice cap and I never saw the sun set on Sunday. The flight attendants made me close my window cover so I couldn’t look out the whole way. 

Arriving There

My flight got in about 6pm. Luckily another Clemson student’s flight got in at relatively the same time and we met up and got a taxi to the hotel. The taxi ride was pretty sweet because  it was night time and the whole city of Beijing was lit up. And it is one bigg city. Our hotel is sooo fancy. I’ve stayed at some pretty nice places, but I think this may be the nicest (Will post some pictures later). I met a few of the other students, but I ended up sharing a room with my professor. That wasn’t bad except that she snores and I woke up several times in  the night to her snoring. P.S. China is 12 hrs ahead of EST.

next post:

I am a hero.

I think I would be much better at a photoblog...

...but then why not just use facebook?

Well I guess if I actually updated this thing, then I could send the link out to people at church and people who aren't on facebook.

Tulip tree (?) catching some sun rays before a storm.

(click on the image to see it bigger)

I fail at blog writing.

It was my intent to just write what I have been doing. Exciting stuff and what not. Just to keep you informed.

Second post I made was more how I was feeling, an entry that seemed more like a journal entry. I don't feel like developing any of my thoughts right now to explain why I didn't like that.

Or maybe I will. . . it just surprises me that anyone would want to read that. You guys must be more bored than I am.

Right now I'm supposed to be writing a paper. . .