Chinalbeit

Inspired by this great blog post at Sinosplice “10 Vegetables China Taught Me to Love“, I thought I would take the opportunity to reflect on some the daily activities I do here that I never would have considered doing back home in America, or that I had to do but hated.  To start off, I couldn’t agree more with the above blog post.  I wasn’t completely anti-vegetable in my old days.  I’d often order the “garden salad” instead of the french fries with my burger, but I rarely ventured away from the safe pastures of iceberg lettuce, romaine, carrots, or broccoli.  My daily diet now consists of all sorts of crazy vegetables I pick up at the wet market near my house (a soon to be blog post about this wet market) and fry them up or grill them on my new barbecue.  The lifestyle changes haven’t stopped there, oh no.  So, without further ado…

1. Riding a Bicycle

I was actually quite an avid bike rider back home, but it was strictly a leisure activity.  The thought of trying to navigate a bicycle around the mayhem otherwise known as the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago sends more shivers down my spine than taking a bath in a tub full of Chinese loogies.  Well, okay…perhaps it’s  not that bad.  During the summer of my 17th year, I actually spent a month or so trying to ride a bike around those streets (due to an unfortuante accident I incurred just months after receiving my driver’s license).  It wasn’t quite so bad, but then again, it was summer and I was seventeen.  I didn’t really have anywhere to be, and I wasn’t in any hurry to get there.  If I had to rely on a bicycle as my main method of transportation to get to and from work, I’m quite sure I’d end up in the unemployment line pretty quickly, and not because of the current economic troubles. Read more…