Duck head stew!

It seems that every time I have something thoughtful to say about being here, it happens when I leave the immediate campus. Living here is like living in a bubble - like all universities I suppose - I wake up at 7am, grab breakfast in the cafeteria (breakfast! can you believe it?) head over to my classroom, come back for lunch at noon, have my afternoon one-on-one tutorial, then spend the rest of the afternoon and evening preparing for the next day. All meals are mostly in the cafeteria and I probably spend $5 on food a day, max.

Tonight, however, my roommate and I ventured once again outside the back gate of the campus to the street stalls, and I'll have to admit that as brave as I sound, the stalls are still scary as shit. We ate at an actual "restaurant" tonight, whose kitchen was smushed into an alleyway and spilled out somewhat onto the sidewalk. We all turn our noses up at Spice (a Thai restaurant in Harvard Square, for those of you from other parts of my life), etc, for their bad hygiene ratings... this is so, so much worse. It's still also a shock that people do not discretely try to hide chewed up chicken bones, fish eyeballs, etc, on their plates but rather blatantly spit them out onto the table, often creating a neat little pile for you to stare at for the rest of the meal, and then some. Even in the cafeteria the other day I was eating this fish dish with a lot of bones and my roommate was like, you are supposed to spit your bones onto the table. The tables then get wiped clean with a dirty rag and no soap. Oh well. But the food's still good and I still haven't gotten - and don't expect to get - sick PLEASE KNOCK WOOD RIGHT NOW.

My dinner tonight was RMB6. That's about 85 cents.

I'm not kidding that my creativity only comes to life once I'm beyond the school gates; my mind is abuzz with prose as I wait patiently, gazing out at the street as young children in crotchless shorts run to and fro, as my noodle soup is being prepared in the adjacent alleyway. I try not to stare at the bucket of stewed duck heads or the proud display of dried duck necks, both local delicacies. Once I get back to my room I just have so much to say and no idea where to start.