Xining: Friday

Friday June 9, 2012

Today I woke up early as usual and took a walk to find some breakfast. I finally found a grocery store and spent a long time trying to figure out everything in it. All the employees would come up and smile and say something, and I’m just assuming it was something along the lines of “Can I help you find anything?” I did find some oatmeal from Australia, and some sliced bread which I found is too sweet, but it will do with the peanut butter I brought with me.

For lunch, I went with Namnang to meet his uncle. We ate Tibetan food, and a lot of it. They kept bringing out dish after dish until I think there were nearly 10 different plates on the table. It was all really good though—lots of dumplings, mutton and yak meat, and a lot of vegetable soups.

In the afternoon, I met a girl, Yixi Dolma, that I had only talked to online before.  

She and I practice English and Tibetan together, so we knew each other pretty well and it was exciting to finally meet in person. She took me to Nanshan Park where we walked around and saw great views from the top of a hill.

Islamic building

In the park, there was a building where a monk was painting in the doorway.

He asked if I had an American dollar bill. I’m not sure why he wanted it since he offered to exchange it for RMB which I told him was unnecessary, so I gave him one and then he offered us some tea. We went to the cooking building next door and had some Tibetan tea which was good and tasted mostly like the sour butter they have. And then he scooped some food from a giant pot—some sort of meat, potatoes and noodles, so I ate that. And then tsampa, and then watermelon, and then he filled my Nalgene with tea and we were on our way.

The sky was dark in one direction and we knew it would rain soon, so we ran down the hill and got a taxi just as the thunder started. We stopped so Yixi Dolma could eat since she didn’t eat any of the food from the monk, but I was still incredibly full after that and the huge lunch earlier. Afterwards, we visited some shops which are not at all like stores in the US. There are tiny rooms that line the edges of a building which spirals up a few floors, so you just keep walking in circles past all these different clothing shops. All the clothes are different and hanging all over the place and there is not a wide selection of sizes it seems, so there's not really an option to get a different size if you find something you like.

For the evening, we planned to watch (or dance) some Tibetan dances, so we went to a nearby university and sat on the basketball courts watching students play waiting for the dancing. Right as it was supposed to start, it began raining again so they canceled it. I was exhausted by this time anyway, so we took a bus back into town.

I left the hotel and moved into a hostel yesterday because it’s a lot more comfortable being around other travelers, especially some who speak English. What’s not more comfortable is the bed. I thought the hotel bed was hard, but this one is a piece of plywood with something similar to a layer of quilt batting over it! Still, not bad for $6 a night…