Chinese Host Family 中国家庭

On Saturday, my phone decided to be strange and show me a text message for two seconds and then disappear off the face of the earth. Luckily, I'd seen the words Chinese family and figured that the text was from Adam, the other ACC student I share a Chinese family with, who later told me that the rest of the text had been about the fact that our Chinese family had given us a call to say that they wanted to take us out on Sunday morning, 10 am. Having no other set plans besides perhaps being a really earnest student and getting a jump start on writing the oral presentations for our midterm exams, we agreed to go (with no notion of what we were going to be doing). Also, in case your confused since I am living in a dorm, ACC gives us host families but they aren't home stays, we can just spend time with them on weekends and ask them for help when/if we need.

[Tangent: That night, Adam, Sam and I went out for perhaps the very best chuanr (串儿) I've had yet, although the place near CUEB also has pretty good chuanr. If you're wondering, chuanr are basically like kabobs covered in a spicy powder and you can get meat ones (we had lamb, lots and lots of lamb) but I've also gotten really delicious eggplant ones.]

As it turns out, beside being out first chance to meet the father and son in the family, it was also my first trip to the area surrounding Beijing, called jiao qu (郊区), which loosely translated means suburbs, but they are almost completely different from American suburbs, at least the American ones I am familiar with. The area is beautiful and has the rural feeling that I think a lot of Beijing-ers crave (the pollution in the city is, as newspapers attest, quite bad). Houses are smaller and farther apart with yards, gardens etc. We went to my host Chinese family's grandfather's house for lunch (they invited us to stay for dinner but Adam and I both hadn't started preparing for Monday's class yet so we had to trouble them to let us leave earlier). The food was delicious and fresh - undoubtedly the most authentic Beijing fare I've had yet including rou bing (肉饼) which can loosely translated as meat pancake (there were also veggie ones), chicken feet, mu er (木耳) which is a fungus, green bean soup, fresh cucumbers from their garden and lots more. Naturally, since it was an authentic Chinese meal, food abounded and there was much effort to ensure that we were really eating enough and trying everything in the right order/enough of everything.

Afterwards we relaxed and talked a bit while our host brother (who's English name is Bob because it is easy to say and remember) taught us a Chinese game that vaguely reminds me of Magic (although since I have no idea how to play Magic it may have no relation whatsoever). Anyways it's grounded in some really famous book and there are 4 players trying to survive and there are weapon cards and bonus cards and it was very confusing for people who couldn't read everything on the cards or remember what all the different ones mean. Still, it was definitely an interesting experience especially with the sports channel of CCTV on in the background which included boxing (streamed in from Vegas), China vs. US volleyball game and some very strange form of pseudo-gymnastics.