Back at Work

So I know I haven’t exactly been posting regularly, but can you blame me? I’ve been pretty busy. I had a very nice last few days with my mom and Marie-Eve. We did more shopping, visited the 798 art district and even went to a cooking class.

798 was interesting. It was full of wacky statues and some modern art galleries. It was free to enter the area, but they charged for all the galleries so we mostly stuck to the gift shops and saw the art on postcards. It was quite hot so we didn’t spend all day there, but we had a nice time and it wasn’t quite as complicated to get to as I thought it might be.

The cooking class was amazing. It was at a place called The Hutong and we learned to make baozi (stuffed buns). We made 3 kinds of fillings (lotus root and bok choy, pork and brown sugar), learned about all the ingredients and the history and even got to take home leftovers and a recipe. The only sad part was that we overdosed on buns and thus decided not to go to our favourite bun place for lunch the next day.

I eventually caught my mom’s cold and got quite sick with a fever yesterday so I wasn’t up to doing much. We packed and went for lunch before taking a taxi to the bus station. My mom accompanied me in and then she and Marie-Eve left for the airport.

They tried to catch a plane yesterday, but the odds were not with them (since they were flying stand-by), so they are trying again today. Keep your fingers crossed for them!

I was back at work today and put the finishing touches on my Excel booking calculator. It is now completely usable and easy to update and comes with simple instructions as well as a document detailing its inner workings so somebody else can update/modify it someday.

On a different note, anyone reading this should a) like the Schoolhouse at Mutianyu Great Wall on Facebook and b) Enter our caption contest.