So, in case you forgot: I LOVE FOOD!! And I am pleased to report that our new base of operations has some pretty excellent food! For your reading pleasure today, some occasionally delicious, perhaps alarming tidbits about food.

1) PIZZA! People. Qingdao has pizza! It is actually widely available which is kind of unexpected but fabulous. Pizza Hut is popular and common and at least as bad as it is in the States. However, we went to a lovely Italian restaurant in town that has pretty darn good pizza and it was MASSIVE. We did order the extra large so perhaps that should have tipped us off. But despite the US love for all things jumbo-sized, I was not prepared for and XL pizza roughly the size of a hula hoop. Yum yum yum.

2) Street food here is awesome! We went wandering last night and got basically a Chinese crepe. They make the pancake, just like when making typical crepes, then put on an egg that they fry, 2 kinds of sauces (one spicy, one hoisin-y), some sort of relish like thing, lettuce, crispy wontons, meat (hot dog or chicken or meat floss (no I haven't tried meat floss yet)). They fold it all up and you pay 7 yuan for the whole package (about the size of a large sandwich). 7 yuan is about $1.00.

3) They were selling live shrimp today at the grocery store. They kept hopping about. It was not my favorite. Our grocery store also has most of your typical products: good bakery, produce, peanut butter, 500 different types of soy sauce, no butter at all, and a special section for their wide variety of sea cucumbers.

4) And last but not least I leave you with a few amusing translations errors (we hope) from the menu in a very good restaurant we tried lately. Among the selections that we asked Google translate to read us we found:

and my personal favorite...