Heavy is the head that eats the crayons...

(One of my favorite quotes from the most recent 30 Rock episode)

It's been an eventful week or so. I've been a bit behind on the writing, but I'll try to just keep plugging along.

This past Sunday was one of my favorite days in Shanghai. Things started out in the morning with a cooking lesson from Phil's Mom. Emma and I subwayed over to Line 3 and met Phil at the train station. After a short walk through the pleasant early summer weather, we arrived at Phil's house and started cooking immediately. We all hung out in the kitchen while Phil's Mom began cooking. She taught us how to many tons of amazing Chinese dishes (hong shao niu rou, some crazy tofu wheat gluten thing, delicious monster shrimps, yummy lima-like beans). Emma was taking notes on the process and I was scribbling down all sorts of nonsense in Chinese. It was actually a pretty hilarious conversation to follow. I'd ask for the Chinese name for some sort of mushroom and Phil's Dad would tell me and then I'd write down the characters and ask some other question. Phil'd Dad would respond in Chinese (and sometimes Shanghainese) and I'd try to keep up with the conversation (Phil would back me up with English translations whenever necessary). It was a lot of fun just sitting in the kitchen and chatting! The meal itself was also amazing and Phil's parents were amazing hosts! Emma and I are going to invite them all over some time for a big Italian dinner. Everybody wins :)

After this glorious Chinese feast/cooking lesson we all made our way over to the Century Park fields for a 4-hour frisbee fest. Teams from Nanjing and Ningbo joined us for a 5-team friendly round robin. The weather was perfect and it was great to run around. Nothing like a little sunny frisbee after lunch :) It was awesome to have so many people from the Nanjing and Ningbo areas join us too. Their teams are really making progress and rapidly developing skills. It's great to see!

A good day isn't complete without a trip to the Dong Bei Ren restaurant for some cheap eats and cold beer. The food service was a bit slow (we arrived at 8pm which is too late apparently), but there was plenty of beer and lots of fun drinking games were played. My favorites involved overlapping hands slapping the table and counting games (which are surprisingly difficult when not played in your native language...)

All in all, a very successful day!

- Jon