Goodbye Xining

I am the Egg Man!!

This morning we happily woke up before 9:30 and I was allowed to eat breakfast.  We ate at the hotel’s breakfast buffet and I had three pancakes, french fries, and bacon.  I thought the breakfast was exceptional.

When breakfast was over, I was assigned a math test.  I gave it my best and earned a score of ninety three percent.  I did not have to retake the test, so we journeyed out of the hotel to mail a couple of packages.  This took a while, given that China is somewhat disorganized. (I humbly apologize to the Chinese government official drinking his coffee and reading this blog right now.)  The first post office we tried only mailed through out China.  A women at the first post office lead us to a second post office that mailed world wide.  They spoke almost no English and we speak no Chinese. This made it hard explaining where in the world we wanted the packages to go.  After the long session of communication with a translator on a cell phone and lots of hand signals, we succeeded  in mailing three packages.  We are dubious that the packages will reach their destination.

The Eating Hall

Having completed our one task for the day, we were all hungry and had earned our meal.  We rediscovered the underground local eating area we had found yesterday, a long corridor of small restaurants with tables filling the central walk way.  In the restaurant booths we saw chicken feet, unknown meat on skewers, soups, fried cakes, and giant prawns. We ate at one spot that looked reasonably decent where the salesman was friendly and welcoming.  We ate some sort of soup filled with small whole eggs, crunchy brown noodles, seaweed, and squares of a jelly-like substance.  We also tried some spicy, fried potatoes that were delicious and a hot meat filled bread.  We decided to stay away from the chicken feet!  For dessert, we shared a fruity yogurt drink.  We all left feeling refreshed and feeling the best we had in ages. 

Super Mom eating ?????

On the way home, we stopped by the grocery store to get things for our movie tonight.  We bought candy, wine and pop and headed home to get an early start on my blog.  Tomorrow, we will leave Xining and take an overnight train to Lhasa.  This train will take us up high into the mountains where we will begin a kayaking adventure.  There will probably be no blog tomorrow evening.

Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic!