Grand Photo Update

I'm trying to bridge the gap between my facebook and blog -- Here's my new album with photos from the trip! Many of them have already been posted here, but there are a lot of new, previously unseen additions!  Check it out! (Click here)

I don't have much to update on, but a few quick things:

There's a fruit stand very close to campus that some of us have been frequenting, and I recently bought a few fruits unknown to Americans - Taiwanese guava and lian wu.  

Taiwanese guava

Lian wu

(photos courtesy of the internet).  The green one, I gather, is called guava (not sure of the Chinese name), but is not much like the pink guava we are used to seeing.  It's dry and crunchy and has a mild perfume-y taste - I like it, but am not crazy about it.  The lian wu was recommended to me by my friend from school, Fran, who said this was her favorite fruit in the world.  It is really delicious!  It's very juicy - like, dripping from elbows juicy - and sweet but not too sweet.  The inside is really weird because instead of a pit that you need to cut out, it just has a weird transition of textures from juicy like a grape to styrofoamy to fluffy like a cotton ball!  Anyway, this stuff is good.  As the season progresses, more bizarre and foreign fruits will become available, so expect more of this.

Another foreign food that I keep meaning to discuss is my new favorite drink!  When I first heard of it I never would have expected those words to come from me... I don't know what it's called, but it's a sugar-free drink and the ingredients (listed in English) include water, barley, brown rice, wheat germ (maybe) and a whole bunch of other things you would never dream of putting in a drink.  And it tastes like them, too.  It actually tastes like drinking brown rice, but it's so light and refreshing and I have really come to love it.  Maybe I'll post a picture the next time I get it.

Today I went back to language corner at the high school and we discussed sports.  My group is extremely sweet, eager, and well-behaved.  Couldn't have asked for better!  Today's vocabulary was sports - Jeremy Lin was, of course, brought up.

Rain, rain, go away...