Going to the Market

Saturday was a fantastic day. Nick and I went to our new gym and I had one of my 3 free personal trainer sessions. After that we stopped by the Internet café and then went to have lunch with Angel, her daughters, and her friend Eric.

Then, before going to spend the afternoon at Angel's house, we stopped by our place so that they could show us how to use the washing machine! (my first load is in now, so I'll let you know how that goes!)

At Angel's house, Lucy helped us translate the menu from a restaurant close to where we live, so we are pretty excited to order ourselves dinner armed with this new knowledge!! Next Eric showed us how to play Mahjong and then Nick and I showed him how to play Texas Hold 'em. (Eric had seen it in the movies and wanted to know how to play!)

Next, it was time to go shopping for food for dinner. Angel took us to a market that is close to where we both live (we're practically neighbors) and skillfully picked out some food for dinner.

This market is only open from 4pm to 7pm and mostly sells is very fresh meat, fish, and vegetables for you to take home and cook.

The first thing she chose were some live shrimp (I'm getting pretty used to this one) and a next a handful of very small cooked (and I think dried) shrimp.

We moved from one stall to the next, picking out so white fish at this place:

Which also had a great collection of squid for sale (although we did not buy any)

Next, Angel picked out some meat beef from this butcher.

We also stopped somewhere to get some goose meat (which I have to say, I'm not a big fan of) but when you buy the goose meat, you get some soup stock made from the goose bone (like ham bone soup) for free. Angel used that to make some soup with white carrots and various meat balls purchased from this stand.

They even had some "meat balls" made from fish that were in the shape of hello kitty! Angel got those for her 10 year old daughter to eat.

It was a pretty neat market, filled with all kinds of things that we don't normally see or eat at home, including the black chicken below:

And these:

And after the market, we got home and Angel made this whole dinner in less than two hours! She's pretty amazing. This woman has got to teach me to cook!