Street Fooooooooooood!!!!

First things first, VIVI'S GOT A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She'll be an assistant to Ernesto Tovar, the Chief Executive of Gambe Group, a trading company based in Miami, Fl. This means she'll be speaking English all day and all night now. That's kind of funny because English was the class Vivi hated most during all of her days in school, including college. Now, her boyfriend and boss only speak English, how ironic. We went out to a Cantonese restaurant Saturday night to celebrate and had some great beef and chicken. She has been so excited the entire weekend and she's looking forward to tomorrow morning.

Today we woke up to absolutely beautiful weather so we decided to head back to Dongmen to eat street food for lunch and enjoy the weather a little bit. My favorite taste is spicy tofu on a stick, it's great and it's only 1 RMB, about 15 cents. Vivi's favorite food are these cream puff things that have a little bit of seafood in them, although I can't taste the seafood at all. They're also very good. They drizzle this cream sauce over top and some green flakes, I have no idea what the flakes are. The other great options are the sticks of meat. There's a ton of different types to choose from. We had some spicy chicken and some beef meat balls this time, the chicken was excellent but the meat balls were just so-so.

By far the most popular item is a bowl of spicy noodles. Vivi had these today and I usually do but passed on them for the meat on a stick. The noodles are so good and so popular that the tables are all taken and people have to just stand around and eat their noodles standing on the sidewalk (you can see this in one of the pictures). The noodles are great and of course, cheap.

We walked around for a short time because it was just too crowded today, again, check out the pictures. We found a 2 RMB shop (their version of the $1 store) and I found some great toys and prizes for my students. I bought a police car that the boys will love and some of those toys that have water inside with balls and baskets that you press a button that shoots air inside and makes the balls float so you try to get the balls in the basket. I think the kids will love it. I'm going to tell them that all the kids who can sing the song on their own, read the book and know all of the new words and sentences at the end of the week will get one. This gives them a goal and a reason to try harder, for those you usually don't. Also, anytime they're acting up this week, I can pull out the toys to get them back on track.

That's all for now and Vivi's going to write a little something at the end of the week about her new job.

Saturday - The Toilet Restaurant

Today Vi and I decided to make our way back to Dongmen (walking street). There are a lot of shops there with great street food and last time we were there, we saw a restaurant called the Modern Toilet Restaurant and we decided we wanted to try it out.

The cool thing about this restaurant is that you either sit on a toilet for a chair or on a booth (nowhere near as fun as sitting on a toilet). Vi said it's a Taiwan restaurant so they had a bit of everything. I had spaghetti and salmon with a cream sauce while Vi had a Udon noodle bowl. We also had two little sides of fried potato wedges with cheese and bacon bits and a fried shrimp dumpling thing. It was all good. Another interesting part was the food was served in some form of a toilet. The funniest looking dishes were the one that the couple next to us got (that's the picture you see here) and the ice cream. Let's just say it looked less than appetizing in the dishes they were served in, but funny in a way.

I took just a couple quick pictures of the area and a short, 10 second video to give you an idea of what it's like. It was raining and it's cold so we didn't want to stay out very long. The video is just to show you how crowded it always is and how there's always people shouting with megaphones about special deals and prices to attract people in, it's very annoying. You can also see one of the McDonald's and KFCs in the area. I could actually see two other McDonald's and another KFC from where I was standing.

After Dongmen, we got back on the subway to go one stop to our place. We decided to go to Wal-Mart to pick up some extra food for the weekend. Since it's cold, Vi wanted to make traditional Guongdong soup for tonight...I hope I like it. While in Wal-Mart I thought it'd be interesting to get a short video to just show how crowded, loud and busy it always is. After I took the 10 second video, a plain clothed security officer approached me and told me to delete the picture and to not take anymore. Anyways, it's crazy inside that place. We bought a few things and just came back to the apartment to have a lazy end to our Saturday.