After dinner lull.

I thought I was going to spend a good chunk of the afternoon working, but I guess I didn't sleep as well on the train as I thought I did because I spent a good chunk of the afternoon asleep. I've never fallen asleep sitting up with gum in my mouth--good thing I didn't choke.

So tonight I took a leisurely stroll, which turned into dinner on a snack street. I think I've finally figured something out. It's perfectly ok to eat lunch in a restaurant by yourself, but dinner alone is frowned upon. Maybe that's why snack streets exist? Anyway, once again, my most in-depth conversation of the day was with a 10 year old girl. While her vocabulary was about as limited as mine is, her pronunciation was great. She was very flattering of my Chinese as well, and gave me some walnuts from her family's table.

She came over only after another Chinese person had joined me:



And he only joined me because I was so fascinated by his t-shirt. All I could do was to tell him 'my wife is a biologist, may I take a picture?' Where the heck did this guy get an Ambion t-shirt? RNA the other nucleic acid indeed.

My triumph of the day were these two sentences: "I am leaving tomorrow morning, but I will come back the day after. Can I leave my bag here?"

Here's a few more photos from today. The last two are from the odd lunch-time restaurant. The thumbnail below is the man who cooked my dinner: yang rou chuanr he toumian (lamb kebobs and flatbread).

Lanzhou