No, We Aren't Tourists

Ok...well I guess the title isn't true, since I still have a tourist visa...

We went out to eat a couple days ago at a restaurant that we'd never been to before, about a 30 second walk from out apartment. We decided they probably get a lot of tourists. When we got in they gave us these two dishes of ginger stuff and sun flower seeds. We started eating the sun flower seeds, shell and all cause we didn't want to make a mess on the table. They started laughing at us and came over and asked if we had ever seen sun flower seeds before and showed us how you can open them and eat the seed, so we just started doing that. I think by that point they had already asked us if we knew how to use chopsticks.  So, we started to order our food and I guess they either decided that the stuff we ordered was too cheap or they wanted us to eat some of the dishes they specialize in because they started showing Dan the more expensive things on the menu, the whole fishes or the chicken, and we didn't want either so Dan just ordered another random vegetable dish and they took our menus and went away. Once we got our food one of the people said she was going to give us a chopstick lesson (I hold my chopsticks the wrong way, which amuses Chinese people but I can use them fine), but we told her we didn't need any and she went away. Later, one of the waitresses walked up and tried to give each of us a fork and knife. We were at least halfway done with our meal at that point, so I don't know why they thought we couldn't use chopsticks, but oh well. The whole thing amused me and made me laugh on the inside. Maybe I should figure out how to hold chopsticks the right way...and also how to hold a pencil the right way while I'm at it.


We're doing pretty well. I found out on Monday (by text message) that the school I've been teaching at is not going to hire me, so I've been looking for a job. I'm waiting til the end of the holiday (Thursday) to hear back from one place and I'm hopefully going to be meeting up with a guy who is in charge of the Asia part of a international advertising company. We went to The Temple of Heaven yesterday, which was the most perfect and gorgeous day ever, and here are some pictures:

The first two are pictures of us standing next to the 70-Year-Old Door. It's a door that was made for an emperor because he was 70 and it was easier for him to get to his garden and take shorter walks and he made it a law that emperors could only use that door after they turned 70...but no other emperor lived to be that old so he's the only one who's ever used it.