To endure the bad breath

Hungry we walked to the bus stop. We forgot to buy additional toasts.  After waiting almost 20 minutes for the correct bus to arrive, we were pleasantly surprised by a very swift bus ride ~30 minutes. That must have been some kind of record. The problem is the unbelievably bad stench rushing by your nose frequently, caused by the bad breath of almost all passengers, words can’t describe. While finding yourself in crowded and smelly setting like a bus ride, you begin to let your mind wander. Maybe I should buy a family pack of mints or gum, carrying it with me at all times to offer mints to the ones in need. A friend of mine called this bad breath phenomenon:
„The downfall of the Chinese society“.

20 minutes early we arrived at the office. Just after we settled in Kenny and Lili were delighted to let us in on the  activities planed. We handed over our passports to Kenny who quickly began ordering our train tickets for our travel to Shanghai. We’ll leave early Monday morning and return home on Thursday morning. Tomorrow we will visited another project site barely out of town, followed by the promised foot massage, which we’ll enjoy in the afternoon. On Friday we will visit the Summer Palace, where a friend of Lili’s will give us a ride, because Chinese policies dictates, that you are only allowed to drive your car six days a week. On Friday her car is not allowed on the road. In the evening play some cards with the lovely people we played with a week ago.

For lunch I focused mainly on eating rice with a little gravy, while Alex feasted on everything available. Like the last few days Lili offered to drive us back to school. I personally would have gladly taken the bus, but she insisted – what can you do.

Home at our school we headed towards Lotte Mart. Trying to find a diagonal shortcut towards it, we wandered through rural back alleys, between tenements and street vendors. In the end we arrived at our destination with time saved and impressions gathered. We bought new toast, water and instant noodles in large quantities.

Back at school we ate dinner in the school canteen. Overall it is amazingly cheap and almost every dish is freshly prepared in front of your eyes. The canteen staff of more than 20 offers a vast amount of dishes to choose from. Those are all dishes you can choose from on the yellow banners:

Maybe 100, maybe more. With prices averaging around 2€, never exceeding 2,50€.
While Alex enjoyed his Beef Noodles, I by chance ordered a dish, which you would find in Germany as well, under the name of: „Doppelt gebackenes Hähnchen in Süß-Sauer Soße“. It was very delicious, despite the potato stick mixed under, which were „al dente“. But I thinking the cook deliberately wanted it this way. We had al dente potatoes before.

We showered with 15+ other students and after I submit this blog entry I will join Alex in working through the mistakes we made in the „IHK Zwischenprüfung“. I am kidding, we’ll play Counter-Strike.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy
Lukas and Alex