Chinese banquets, medicine & hospitality

Today was a big work day for HGirl. She had to be on. After some brief planning meetings, HGirl joined her colleagues for a Chinese lunch. She is sure this was not the way people typically lunch, because there was so much food. There were about 15 to 20 courses, with the last two courses being noodles and then fruit.

HGirl had been sneezing all day and was beginning to feel awful. Of all the meds she brought with her (cipro, diflucan, ambien, scopolamine, paracetamol, Imodium, pepto) she didn’t bring any cold medicine. So the country expert (a wonderful woman from Australia that HGirl had met in Tanzania) took her up stairs to the hotel shop for some Chinese medicine. Now, again Big C, we know HGirl gives you a hard time about the homeopathic stuff…. But she was desparate. Anyways, the country expert hooked HGirl up with some herbal caplets with Ganmaoling & Jiaonang. Don’t ask, b/c HGirl doesn’t know. But it seems to be helping a bit.

After lunch, HGirl and colleagues had a meeting with the deputy major of the city. She had to do her presentation again. Then they met with the local public health and academic folks.

All this was followed by another banquet, this time with even more dishes. Before you can say anything, Big C, yes HGirl was adventurous. There was stinky tofu, eel (kinda good once she got over the appearance), jelly fish (it looked like cabbage, HGirl asked what it was after she ate it), something HGirl thinks was sea cucumber (but who knows). There were losts of toasts with rice wine (kinda good). After the dinner, they were presented with gifts and headed out for some shopping.

The shopping was great. The exchange rate is about ¥7.6 to the dollar. So HGirl got fans a purses. Now its off to bed to take care of the cold.

Peace!