Bulgaria with Noodles

After church today I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with Beth and Dave Kanelos, who were leading the worship. What really made it special, however, was that we had a real live Chinaman to keep us company during the meal. And, better still, Isaac Huang is from Shenzhen. In fact, he goes to the OCT church and knows quite a few people at SIF, Shenzhen International Fellowship, our church during our five years in SZ. Of course he knows Heidi, but then every Christian in Shenzhen knows Heidi. It was so strange (and so enjoyable) to hear someone speaking English with a Chinese accent and occasionally chatting with the restaurant staff in Cantonese. Isaac politely tolerated the few (very few) phrases of Mandarin that I still remember. The other strange thing was that meeting Isaac showed me how much I miss China. Five years is a fair old chunk of your life, I suppose, and part of me wishes that we were still there. Lianhuacun Park, Bill, Julia and the extremely naughty Diu...

When we go to Sofia, we sometimes have lunch at The Happy Grill (very unoriginal), but in HK it is usually a trip to the Prince Edward metro station (use your Hong Kong tong) and to the One Dim Sum restaurant half way down Playing Field Road, on the left . Actually, it is not one dim sum – it’s lots of them.  And just in case you did not know, dim sum have nothing to do with being bad at Mathematics. They are a bit like jaozi , as they are pastry rolls filled with all sorts of yummy things. Hongkies, if you still have not worked it out, are residents of HK. Shenzhen is just around the corner and over the border, so we were only temporary hongkies. Aquatic Smaug When you get to the restaurant, there is always a queue and sometimes you have to wait nearly an hour for a table. In fact, we arrived at about three in the afternoon, a very non-lunch hour of the day, and yes, there was still a queue and it was crowded inside. Those round bamboo baskets soon arrived at o...

We washed the chopsticks too. Firstly, I was delighted to see that two of my favourite blogs, Peter and Minty's www.movetobulgaria.blogspot.com, and Claire's www.auntiebulgaria.blogspot.com, have new posts. Minty had not posted anything for ages, so we were wondering what had happened. Secondly, my own blog has now had more than 6,000 "hits". That is pretty good for a blog that has only been going for two months. Bill and Julia are our dear friends. It would be difficult to imagine our years in China without them. Even though Bill and Julia are younger than us, Irena and I always enjoy their company. We are always laughing when we are together.  Of course, this is China and so one of the most important things the four of us do is – yes, you guessed it – eating! Bill and Julia love Irena’s cooking, so they often come to our apartment for a meal. We often go out to a restaurant together and so that means leaving the ordering to Julia! On Sunday, after c...

The view from balcony of our villa in Kalotina, BG Why is this blog called Bulgaria with Noodles ? Well, at moment we are here in Shenzhen (SZ) and then, next summer, we will be moving back to Bulgaria. In the meantime, I bore to death all of my unfortunate colleagues at Green Oasis School by telling them about that country in SE Europe. Although physically I am still in southern China, my heart is in Bulgaria. As this is now my fifth year in the Middle Kingdom, maybe you would like to read one or two points of comparison and contrast between the two countries. Noodles, at last! Firstly, food. I am sure that all of my Chinese friends would agree that food ought to come first. Chinese food is, well, okay. Eating out is cheap in China. I am writing this after having eaten lunch in the Green Oasis cafeteria. For a school lunch, it was not bad. Yes, there are some particularly annoying things about haute cuisine Chinoise , such as the strange concept that a chicken’s head, fat,...