Saturdays!

I love Saturday mornings!

Not only do we have a chance to sleep in, but we have a nice, relaxing start to our day. My day starts around 8:00. I have finally become an early morning riser on weekends. This must come with age! (OK, 8:00 may not be early to you, but it is to someone who normally wakes up at 10:00!) Edoukou, on the other hand, manages to stay asleep until 11:00 or 12:00. Life here, although not extremely complicated, does take its toll.



This morning I had my shower, got dressed, put in a load of clothes ( we have a washing machine), threw on a sweatshirt and scarf and went downstairs to get breakfast. Now, I have never been a breakfast person, but I have found the most amazing morning food! We usually have two different kinds. They are very hard to describe since no one knows the ingredients, but I will give it a try.



The first one looks like a big round pizza dough. It has green specs in it and I can't figure out what they are. I don't know if it is chives or spinach, or what. They have a lot more greens here than we do. The light greens are all called cabbage. The dark greens are all called greens! There are no English words to describe all their vegetables! It also has sesame seeds on it and it is fried because, of course the best thing about it is the grease! There are all kinds of oil here: peanut, sunflower, olive, etc. I don't know the taste for each one, but I' sure they use the cheapest. I buy according to the weight. Usually, I buy 1.50 yuan, which is 25 cents USD. Yep, that's about it, grease, sesame seeds and little green specs. Yum!



The second breakfast I splurge on. It is 2.50 yuan, which is 35 cents. It is a very complicated food. First the cooker puts a pancake like mixture on a steaming hot griddle. (He makes it in front of us, where the other one makes it in the back of a restaurant and brings it out already cooked.) Second, he cracks an egg on it and spreads it over the pancake mixture. Third, he adds those little green specs, something yellow, hot peppers, and this brown globby stuff which is sweet. Fourth, he folds it half way, then adds a crisp , wafer like cookie thingy. Fifth, he folds it up all the way, puts it in a plastic bag and sends us on our way. (To do our part to save the environment, we are going to take a Tupperware container to put our food in so we don't use plastic bags.) He does this everyday, six days a week, without ever cracking a smile. So, our mission is to make him smile, just once. I don't know how we will accomplish this. My extremely poor Mandarin never makes him smile, it just makes him annoyed. But I'm sure there's a way.



After I got my delicious breakfast, I stopped in at the Family Mart (7-11 to you and me) and bought a Minute Maid orange drink and a peach drink for Edoukou. On my way back to the apt, I stopped to check the weather/communication board. All apts have these boards. They tell the date, weather, and other stuff I can't read. The weather this morning was .5 Celsius. Yes, winter is here in Shanghai! Although the weather fluctuates. This week it was 12 and 15 on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday it was 3.



Now I'm back in my cozy apt. My heater is on. My clothes are hanging in the living room drying. I have another load to do today. The sun is shinning through my big living room room window, making my light wood floors look clean! Ah, but there are some dust bunnies eyeing me....I guess it's time to go shopping! (Dust bunnies can wait!)