Dali Feastgiving

MEAT FEAST at the Bad Monkey

I'd been looking forward to Thanksgiving break for so long! Thanksgiving break is the first break we'd had since the beginning of October.... and we had to make it ourselves - I had to beg, lie, cheat, steal, and coerce in order to take two days of classes off.  Since October, all we've had are the weekends, a few conferences that took up those weekends and COLD weather. Dali is always a welcome escape, especially since there's a Wal-mart Supercenter in town, as well as a legit movie theater where a ton of us got together and watched Harry Potter 6.5. The first day we arrived, we went to our favorite bar, where our favorite bartender, the kiwi Jess, was tending zee bar. The Bad Monkey. It was Thanksgiving Day and the Bad Monkey was still hosting a roast. Roast potatoes, roasted veg, roasted bread, roasted pork, roasted beef, and stuffing. No turkey, but I've always been a ham girl. Needless to say, it was a feast that culminated in me passing out on a couch.

Pretty bag ladies

The next day, Phoebe and I spent way too much time thinking about buying these bags. I truthfully don't remember why. Phoebe's broke less than 48 hours later. Cute but cheap.

The first course of our official CEI Thanksgiving Feast

One of the more awesome reasons that we went to Dali was because we assumed that with such a large foreign population hanging out in Old Town that there would be ongoing Thanksgiving feasts and we were not let down. The best part was that CEI paid for it. CEI paid for this delicious spiced pumpkin soup. I also had my palm read. No fortunes, although the palm reader was surprisingly astute.

Old Dali

So now that my camera is stolen, these pictures were all taken by Tom, until I realized that I could take pictures on his camera and then later nag him to death for him to give them to me!

We ran into our friend, Vinny, who used to work for CEI, while we were in Dali. Vinny actually hired me and now he runs a biking company in beautiful Yunnan. Vinny had a friend named Bob who has an amazing Moroccan chef. Bob volunteered his services to us, and together, the 15+ of us attended an amazingly cooked dinner of Moroccan food. We had multiple courses!

Morrocan food

The first was a cold rice salad with tuna. It looked like a fried rice but cold. There was a beautiful veggie salad with oil and red wine vinegar and hard boiled eggs. Then we had several things come out at once.  First was the hare. YUMMY. I was lucky that Axel forked me a tender dark meat piece. Covered in white raisins, it was sweet but not overbearing.

Hello little juicy bunny. You were delicious.

Almost immediately followed a mashed potato pot covered in cheese, as well as a powdered sugar sticky rice. CARBS, I love you.

Cheesy mash potatoes

As we sat, sated and full of delicious nom noms, the sexy chef brought forth a wrapped box. He hoped that we liked cakes, as he unwrapped these beautifully dense chocolate covered almond cakes. I'm salivating, still.

Chocolate covered cakes

All in all, I can gladly say that Dali is and will always be a welcome destination for a quick vacation. Even though I lost my camera, and I spent 1231 kuai this past weekend, which is more than half a month's salary but really only.. $183.96, which let's be real, that's only like.. 3 meals in New York. I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving and you were able to watch the annual dog show, which I loathe but can't help but watch because some of those pups are sooo cute!

To all my friends back home, I love you and miss you! Happy nuptials, McTigues!