Allison CP - 6

On Wednesday evening, I ventured off to alumni village to meet with XinWen for our CP meeting. She had graciously offered to cook me a traditional Chinese meal! I was quite excited to get a glimpse of the cuisine I might be experiencing when I move to China. However, since XinWen is from the Sichuan province, all of her dishes are spicy (as that's what Sichuan is famous for). Typically, I am not a huge fan of spicy food but I really wanted to try something new so I went in with an open mind. Everything was dandy at first. I mean, she was just chopping veggies...or something green that I didn't pay much mind to. It wasn't until she dropped them into the pan that I noticed what they were a TON of chili peppers. Even the smell of them cooking was so strong that I coughed quite a bit. She had to open the back door for me because I couldn't stop coughing at one point. Finally, my esophagus calmed down a bit just in time for the meal. I was a little apprehensive about trying the "hot chicken" as she called it since the scent had affected me so much while it was cooking. XinWen promised it wasn't too spicy though so I did try it, and as it turns out it really wasn't too spicy. I certainly needed a lot of water but I wasn't dying from the heat. She also made some rice a few minutes later which helped considerably.

We spoke quite a bit about Chinese music and where I could find it online. We also listened to a little bit of American music too since I caught her singing "Call Me Maybe" while cooking. Although we spoke primarily in English, she was able to instruct me on a few of the cooking ingredients in Chinese and she showed me the "hot chicken" recipe online which was all in Chinese. I taught her the word ginger in English and she taught me cucumber in Chinese. We traded off on words that we didn't know, mostly food terms. I think it was quite beneficial for both of us so we'll both be better off in the near future at restaurants.

We also worked briefly on an essay from her composition class. She asked me to proof read her third draft. I found it hard to believe that she was already three drafts in and still had so many word form errors. I was able to point them out to her though and explain why they were wrong in the various contexts.