Seawolf/Josh Ritter Come to Carleton

So apparently this Josh Ritter character is a pretty big deal? Anyway, I went to the concert last night and it was fun, though I was starting to get sleepy after Seawolf played and I thought most of the Josh Ritter songs sounded very similar to each other. However, I did appreciate how enthusiastic Josh Ritter and his band were. They sort of reminded me of the tabla players that did a concert for us at the program center in India. Anyway, I really liked this song by Seawolf. Enjoy!

Sharks, Korean Pancakes, and Ice Cream

A warm hello from Auckland! This Monday marks the beginning of my third week away, my second week in Auckland, and my first time using internet since I've left! Our first week was spent on the small island of Rarotonga, living in little apartment-style rooms at the "Paradise Inn", going for morning snorkel excursions, eating heaps and heaps of passion fruit, searching for the perfect cowrie shell along the beach, and occasionally drawing some palm trees. I went on my first SCUBA dive(!!!) since certification which was AWESOME to say the least. I felt like I was inside a giant aquarium. The water was SO clear and SO blue, and some highlights were seeing a spotted eagle ray and a shark! I can't wait to go again when we get to the Great Barrier Reef. Saw some pretty cool fish while snorkeling as well--two rays, a sea turtle, giant clams, a large school of trumpet fish, and two very large flounder hiding on the bottom.

For the past week in Auckland, we have spent every day in the print studio from 9-5 with a break for lunch. I chose to do relief prints, so I did my first woodcut last week and am starting in plastic this week. My first print was a tree--wood on wood, so "meta" right? It's a lot of fun, and I really like how tactile the wood is to work with. The studio is located very close to the busiest section of Auckland (which is still incredibly tame compared to every other city I've been to) which means any variety of foreign cuisine is available for lunch, from Korean pancakes to Chinese dumplings to falafel kebabs to excellent sushi to mango lassis. It's lovely, and it makes up for the terrible dining hall food for dinner. In the evenings, I've been exploring the city with friends, trying out different gelato places and walking to the wharf to sketch the boats and sit in the wind. It stays light until about nine PM, which is great. Tomorrow I'm going to see Crystal Castles, which should be really fun. This past weekend the whole group went to a Marai to stay with a Mauri tribe. We were welcomed into their home like family and slept in one giant room all together. We went swimming in the river and ate some yummy smoked eel for dinner! The whole family was so sweet, and there is much more to say about how heart-warming the experience was, but I'm running out of internet time! So I will elaborate more on that later. Anyways, warm greetings from New Zealand, and I will write again before departing from Auckland on Saturday.

Off to the South Pacific

Tonight I'm heading down to Raratonga, the capital of the Cook Islands and the first stop on my 3-month adventure in the South Pacific! I'm going on a studio art program that focuses primarily on printmaking and mixed media drawing, but throughout the entire trip we hike and snorkel and SCUBA and explore! Other places on the agenda are New Zealand (mostly the North Island) and Australia. So yesterday I took a flight from DC to LA, and after a brief visit with my family I am flying south towards summer weather. Internet will be intermittent since I am not bringing my computer (instead I have five homemade sketchbooks and flippers), but I will try to post when I am in larger cities, the first being Auckland sometime early next week. Wishing everyone a most joyful 2013!

PS: Everyone should see South Pacific, the musical! It's grand.

A Cuppa Chai

So it's definitely been getting colder up here in Minnesota. We had a beautiful first few weeks of October, and then last week the temperature suddenly dropped. It was an overcast week and weekend, but today (even though it's still chilly) the sun finally came out again!

In celebration of the cooler weather, I've been making more and more warm things to drink and eat. Sunday is the evening that I cook for my house, and two Sundays ago I made my mom's delicious pot roast for the first time! It was the perfect cold weather food, though ironically I think it was rather warm that day...

I also made some delicious chocolate pudding, and in a moment of inspiration added a scoop of peanut butter and some chocolate chips to the middle of each cup. Heated up in a microwave, the peanut butter and chips melted into the pudding, YUM.

This past Sunday I made a traditional Ethiopian sweet potato and lentil Wat (stew) along with some lachha parathas, which were so yummy. I forgot how easy it is to make parathas/chapatis once you get into the swing of them. Definitely going to go back to making chapatis when I want a dipping vehicle.

Over the summer I was making a lot of chai when I got back from India, but I stopped after making it a couple of times at the beginning of the school year. Today I was really in the mood for some nice hot, spicy and sweet chai so I made a cup. I forgot how much I love it: the smell of crushed cardamom, the way the liquid slowly turns from pale white to a creamy gold as the tea leaves boil, and the way the first sip warms your whole body. Drinking chai is almost like a spiritual experience for me. Drinking it immediately calms me. I feel cozy and refreshed afterwards.

If I have learned anything from my attempts at cooking Indian food, it's that there is no objectively "correct" recipe for anything--everyone has their own combination of spices that they use to make each dish. Here's a recipe for chai that works well for me, but freshness of spices, type of milk, variety of tea, and even what kind of pot you are using will change the flavor.


Chai Tea (makes one large mug of tea)

Ingredients:
3/4 cup milk (I have been using 1%)
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 tsp black tea (darjeeling is good)
3 whole cardamom pods
2 small pieces cinnamon bark
1 whole clove
TINY piece fresh ginger (about the size of one whole clove, but add more if you like spicier tea)
Sugar to taste (I use 1-2 teaspoons, depending on my mood)

Put the water, milk and tea leaves in a small pot on stove over medium heat. Crush the spices (does not need to be fine--just make sure the cinnamon and cloves are broken up a little and the cardamom pods are open) with a mortar and pestle and then add them to the pot. Stir. Bring the mixture to a boil and turn heat off or very low. Add ginger and stir in sugar if using. Let sit for about three minutes and then bring to a boil again. Pour and serve immediately!

good song

Made in China

Written September 18, 2010

So I’ve been in China for exactly a week today, and what a week it has been.  I feel like I’ve been here for months.  I’ve strolled along paths lined with willows and lotus ponds, passed by elderly couples dancing the Chinese waltz in the park, climbed the knee-length steps of the Great Wall, wandered through the palaces of the Forbidden City, walked the longest corridor in the world, tried my hand at Chinese calligraphy, navigated the crowded Beijing subway and bus system, eaten five types of dumplings and Beijing Kaoya (roast duck), peed in seatless toilets, and bargained with the vendors in the silk street market.  Every day is new and exciting.  In fact, because each day varies so much from the day before and is so different from what I’m used to, I have no field of reference, making it nearly impossible for me to form a solid opinion about the country and my experience here so far. 

I will write more about daily life later.  Let’s talk about the name of this entry for a second: Made in China.  Most things that you buy in America are made in China.  You go into a store and buy a washcloth or a pair of headphones and you don’t think twice about where they come from, that someone--who probably makes less than a dollar a day and lives in a run-down room in the outskirts of a small town, perhaps close to the Great Wall, halfway around the world, with no clean water and breathing air containing the amount of tar equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day--made that object available for you to buy.  That one washcloth is that person's sole means of survival.  He or she can’t afford it but can make it for someone else. 

Most things that you buy or use in China are also made in China.  Except these things are different.  China is known for cheap prices but items of often poor quality.  You can probably buy that exact same pair of headphones in China, but rather than producing high quality sound, they might turn fuzzy after a day or two, or one of the ear pieces might fall off.  These items are often the rejects: the ones with defects that weren’t deemed good enough to be exported.  Why is it that the country that makes the items doesn’t even get to have the first pick of them?

Chinese products are full of irony.  For example, one thinks the purpose of a shower is to clean.  Well, your shower head might be functional, but instead of spreading the water out in a flow that easily washes shampoo and soap off of you, it might let the water flow in a trickle that isn’t really strong enough to clean off any bath products, even if the water pressure in your bathroom is generally relatively strong.  The object itself works, but not in such a way that fulfills its intended purpose. 

Someone said to me that the Chinese just have lower expectations for what they buy and that Americans expect more quality for their dollar.  Do we as Americans expect too much? If you buy a lamp and it works but it doesn’t illuminate your desk enough to read, is that okay?

In a way, both societies are materialistic.  The common saying repeated here is that Americans work and live to acquire objects, and the Chinese make objects to work and live. 

Maybe its better not to put so much importance on having things that work.  If your bed breaks, maybe it shouldn’t be such a big deal.  At least you were lucky enough to have that bed.  Or maybe the bed isn’t important at all.

Next time you buy something or use something, look at where it was made. Think about it.

Qingdao Midterm Break

***Written during my trip to China in Fall 2010***

Right now I am in the lounge of Kaiyue International Youth Hostel in Qingdao, China.  Qingdao is a coastal city in between Tianjin and Shanghai known for its beaches and its beer.  In fact, they sell Tsingtao (old spelling of Qingdao) beer in the States.  Everywhere you go, you see tons of kegs of beer sitting on the streets outside of restaurants and little convenience shops.  Our most recent discovery is beer in a bag.  A little old Chinese woman who calls herself “Mama” (we have now dubbed her 'Mama Pijiu') has this tiny little store the size of a small walk-in closet from which she sells drinks, shampoo, ice cream, and cigarettes.  She has a couple of kegs of beer outside and pours it into plastic bags, which she then weighs on a tiny scale to determine how much the beer costs.  She then pokes a hole in the bags with a straw so you can sip as you walk.  The real problem arrives if your bag breaks while you are walking.  

The group with Mama Pijiu

The beaches here vary from dirty sand and cloudy water crowded with tons of people to beautiful light-sandy beaches with relatively clear water and fewer people.  The latter is readily available to us a couple of blocks down from our hostel.  Beach #6 is right next to the train station and a bus stop, and the boardwalk above it is crowded with vendors selling a sort of stale pita bread and fried squid on a stick.  Lots of vendors have loud speakers and shout at you, trying to sell English-speaking tourists boat rides. There are also people dressed up as characters (i.e. sheep) from a Chinese animated children’s show called Xi-Yang-Yang.  It’s funny because even though locals say “hello” whenever they see foreigners like us walk by, they really don’t know if we speak English, or where we are from in general, which is kind of comforting.  I heard someone ask one of their friends if they thought I was French.  My friend was asked if he was Australian.  I’m glad that people don’t look at me and immediately know I’m form the States, though I don’t think being from the U.S. leaves the same negative impression here that it does in other countries, since people here seem to generally look up to the U.S.

Xi-Yang-Yang characters, Beach #6 in the background

On one of the first few days here, a couple of the guys in our group met this Chinese woman named Ping Ping who runs a business that helps Chinese students get into and study in universities in the States.  She lives in Beijing but is currently in Qingdao on holiday, plus she grew up in Qingdao.  She speaks English very fluently because her husband is American.  She sort of took us under her wing since her nephew is trying to learn English and she wanted him to practice speaking with us.  So on Monday we all met at the bus stop close to our hostel and hopped on the 2-hour-long #304 bus (standing the whole way!) to Laoshan, a beautiful mountain on the coast of Qingdao known for its fresh spring water and beautiful scenery.  We all sort of wandered along part of the road until we came to a little pathway that took us down onto some cliffs above the water.  We climbed the cliffs down to the water and sat there for a bit, which was very nice, and the views were spectacular.  We then got lunch, which Ping Ping ordered for us since we have no idea what any of the characters for shellfish are, and sat on the beautiful sandy beach for a while.  I collected some shells and the boys went swimming and then we caught the 2-hour bus back.  The bus was so crowded on the way back that even though I was standing up I didn’t need to hold onto anything because there was no space for me to fall into.  For dinner we went to a place run by a Chinese woman with HUGE hair, sort of like Marge from the Simpsons, but not blue.  Our final dish was a whole fish cooked in some sort of sweet sauce.  Two guys from a group of three other Americans that we have been hanging out with ate the eyes, which are supposed to be a delicacy here!

Cliffs we hung out on at Laoshan

Fish DEVOURED, no eyes left

Yesterday we got up even earlier (my alarm was set for 6:47!) and went to the same mountain again with Ping Ping and her nephew, but this time to a different side. We ended up at someone’s vacation home on a cliff on the mountain.  It’s still unclear to me whose home it was, but  it was one of Ping Ping’s friends.  One of the men staying in it took us all fishing off the coast of the mountain in a little wooden boat.  We didn’t catch very much, but the views were spectacular and it was a beautiful day to spend on the water.  We came back to the house in the late afternoon and the family cooked us a feast of shellfish (I tried some very interesting looking creatures including some sort of very large sea snail in a beautiful shell the size of my fist! It was pretty gross.).  We were then driven back to the hostel in a van (an eventful ride trying to sit on a stool in the the back of a car speeding down windy, rocky mountainsides), and I immediately crashed when we arrived home because I was so exhausted.

The farm of the family that took us around

Our boat for the day

Ji and me, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed

Pablo's huge fish

 

Yummy sea snail.

  Today I think we are going to visit the Qingdao brewery, which should be cool to see!