Teaching, cooking, etc

Tonight I made jambalaya from scratch. Like a boss. My roommate ate it and she liked it, too.

She's Australian and pretty chill. A bit older than me, and with more teaching experience, too. She's been in China for I think two years already, and spent at least one year in Russia. She made me Russian pancakes one morning (which are like pancakes in America but less fluffy and you use condensed milk instead of syrup and butter) and I've been trying to figure out what I could cook for her in return ever since. But now that I have a little thing of cajun spice I can actually make stuff.

She liked the jambalaya, but wouldn't take a peanut butter sandwich with it, and was terribly confused when I suggested it. She's never had a peanut butter sandwich with soup or chili or anything like that. Nor has she ever had a PB+J sandwich. But I've never had Vegemite, so I guess we're all even.

Today I had to hop over to the SIP (Singaporean Industrial Park) district of Suzhou. Conveniently for me the San Xiang Square metro entrance is right near my apartment. San Xiang is on the North/South metro line, but is only one stop from the East/West line. I picked up some sausage and some spaghetti sauce and even found pumpkin pie filling at the Euromart (a store specializing in imported goods- mostly English, but there's also some Japanese, Indian, etc), so I might try to make pumpkin pie here soon.

As soon as I came up out of the subway I saw a guy on a little ebike moving water jugs like what you'd put on a water cooler. These water jugs are a booming business because the water in China is, well, it's not fit to drink. He had two of these giant plastic bottles between his legs, four or five on a string that ran from handle to handle, and then some kinda weird backpack rig that he'd attached at least twenty more water jugs to. And he was just passing people and swerving in and out of traffic.

I got to ride an ebike myself, and drive one, too, the other day, with my friend from Canada. I can see how they would be a lot of fun in warmer weather. Perhaps I'll invest in one.

But for now I am stuffed on jambalaya. I'm gonna call it a night.