Dinner

This evening we had dinner at Katia's. Katia has two roommates: Diana, a 17-year-old Ukranian girl, and Mariana, a 20-year-old Russian girl. Mariana is in Shanghai right now, for at least 10 days. She works with the Russian embassy. She speaks Russian, English and Chinese fluently, her French isn't bad, and I'm sure she gets by in some other languages.
Three weeks ago we went to Dashanzi, Beijing's art district. I've been there a couple times before. It's a wonderful place. It's an old factory neighbourhood transformed into funky-looking art galleries. It's a great place to hang out on a Sunday afternoon, strolling from gallery to gallery, looking at sometimes very interesting Chinese art.

Since it's so late, I'll put more pictures up later...

This evening's dinner was marvelous. Katia out-did herself. Chicken with "Hollondaise" sauce, steak with "cafe de Paris" sauce (these are packaged powdered sauces brought from France! simply add water and enjoy!), real Parmes Ham (jambon cru!) with real cheese, cherry tomatoes and melon...mmm....so good! And then we danced a bit, and then we played hide-and-seek outside in the building's playground. The security guards sometimes helped us look for our friends, sometimes scolded us for keeping everybody awake, even though they were being louder than we were!!! It was an enjoyable evening...