More adventures in Chinese medicine

This afternoon we had another American culture class. This one was taught by the same teacher, who if you haven't noticed is obsessed with America, but it is for graduate students and is about tourism. It started with us walking in the class and everyone applauding. You don't really know how to act. Then we divided into small groups and each went to talk with a few Chinese students. We didn't rally talk about tourism much in my group, but we did talk about alot of other things. Mostly normal, like what are your hobbies, what do you study, sort of questions. But the students were very nice and it was pretty fun. This time they asked me what i think of love and marriage and if I think love can last, which I thought was a little weird. They asked because they have the idea that American youth want to be single and free and divorce is becoming more and more common in China.
After brewing one batch of my Chinese Medicine myself, I decided that it took a long time and I didn't really want to do it again. Li Juan told me I can go to the hospital on campus and they will cook it for me for a small fee. So after class Deborah and I went to the hospital to see if I could get them to brew it for me. The building itself was not that bad, but the Chinese medicine brewing room was out back in this little alley thing. We could smell the room before we actually got there, Chinese medicine has a very distinctive smell. We entered this room full of about 20 rice cookers cooking different people's medicine and a middle aged man cooking them. This guy spoke the worst Sichuan hua I have ever heard and we asked him to speak Pu Tong hua, but he couldn't. So, I was really glad I brought Deborah, although it was really hard for her to understand him too. Finally we figured it out and we paid 4.20 kuai for him to cook it and put it in 6 little pint-size glass bottles. He said it would be ready at 5:20 (about an hour), so I went swimming and then went to pick them up.
This evening Laura, Li Juan, and I went to dinner at a neighbor's house. One of Li Juan's friends is friends with these people that lives in our compound. It is a family, mom, dad, and two twin sons. The sons weren't home yet when we came over but they got home in the middle of dinner. Even though the boys were twins, they still called them didi and gege (big brother and little brother), which I thought was a little strange. There house was very neat and very nice. We sat and talked to the dad while the mom finished cooking dinner. The food was delicious! The family was very nice, but it was a little weird having Li Juan there because she spoke for us most of the time and was talking for probably about 3 hours straight. No one else could get a word in edge-wise, us least of all. But it was really fun and I'm glad to finally meet some other people that live around us. Hopefully we will hang out with them again. Now I'm tired and I'm going to go to sleep. I've got to get up early tomorrow because we are going on an adventure tomorrow to Lezhi, a town we read about in a book. I will tell you more about it tomorrow after I get back.