Saturday: hotpot

Today was a lazy day for me, while Nick prepared his lecture to the middle school teachers at Mianyang University. I ended up watching about an hour of the Chinese version of American Idol, which premieres on Friday nights for about 4 hours and then gets re-run on Saturday morning. The three finalists were all male, and sadly, the ‘very handsome’ young man from Chengdu was cut. He did look pretty dashing with his various costume changes and performances, however. Next week is the finals. I think the guy who plays the guitar will win.

Tonight we went to hot pot with our family, which is a restaurant style where you order raw food and then stick it in the boiling pot in the center of the table before eating it. We got a variety of foods including potato, celery, beef, pork, pork balls, tofu, duck organs (unknown), and tripe. I stuck to the foods I knew, and put them in the non-spicy pot, while most of the family stuck their food in the hot portion, spiced with the peppers native to Sichuan province, or Szechuan as it’s known in the states.