Su what?

Su de ma? is the phrase for 'Is this vegetarian'. So far, not working.

We've been having a few misadventures here, mostly with food. Yesterday, Dave and me walked into a Chinese restaurant (here, they might just call it restaurant, though) -and tried to order vegetarian food. In a move that was as much our fault as theirs, we got some green things and mapo tofu with pork in it. And so we drank our dinner.

Today, we walked into a noodle place, ordered vegetarian noodles (we thought so, at any rate) and got noodles with little pieces of pork floating in it. Evidently, eating the big pieces makes you a meat eater, if they are tiny, they don't count. And so we drank our lunch.

Apart from food, things are good. The beer is cheap in most places (although not good anywhere), learning Mandarin is like drinking water from a firehose, but it definitely keeps me out of trouble... There's a bunch of undergrads around, but the Michigan contingent is the only grad school bunch.

We got moved to the nicer dorms today. We've gone from mostly squalor to Motel 6 - a slight upgrade. The mini-refrigerator is a definite bonus - out of sheer resignation, I might have to start eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my room.