Visit with Cherry in Bloomington, Indiana

Univ. of Indiana 10//7/12

 

Korean BBQ with our dear AFS daughter

 

Univ. of Indiana campus

 

Hot Pot - fun and different meal

 

Cherry, Gena & Sally

great evening

We drove fast and furious from St. Louis to Bloomington to meet with our exchange student daughter, Cherry, who is attending U of I. We made that poor girl wait as we ran into several detours and there was an hour time change we weren't aware of. Bless her heart. So great to see her and we had some good hugs. Cherry (Yuan Dong in Chinese) treated us to a wonderful late lunch of Korean BBQ. This is where you take meat that has been marinated and cook the thin pieces yourself. There were about 15 sides dishes. We had a wonderful feast and thank her for the great meal.

Cherry then showed us around her little campus town. I walked across campus to see her dorm room. U of I is beautiful with lots of flowers, fountains, walkways, and big, old trees. She is happy there and has made friends and is doing good.

For dinner, her friend, Sally (her American name since she is from China too) had invited us over for “hot pot” – something we had never had before. We went shopping at two Chinese stores to get the special ingredients – there were plenty of them and they are not cheap. We arrived at her friends place which was a nice apartment on campus for 4 students, it has a full kitchen, living room, 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms. Very nice, but very expensive.

So Cherry and Sally speeded into action and got the pot going. It is a two sided electric pot and on one side they put a base flavor, and in the other side it was a base, but hot and spicy. That got to bubbling, and they got the Chinese cabbage, bok choy, paper thin sliced beef, fish balls, shrimp balls, fish flavored tofu all ready. We each got a bowl and some chop sticks and we were ready to cook in the hot pot. John had to get a fork and I found it almost impossible to pick up the fish balls with chop sticks, but finally did it after several attempts by stabbing it. I was surprised that the one side, while hot and burning, was the one I liked the best. Sally is such a sweet, adorable little gal and we were thankful that we got to have this first experience and a fun evening with the girls.

Alas, it was time to head to our hotel room after an exhausting day. Cherry walked us out to the sidewalk and we all hated to part. Too bad we didn't have more time. We had a fun, busy day together but it was just too short. I hope Cherry can come spend time with us next time, maybe somewhere in our travels. Hugs my dear girl and we miss you.