Seizing our moment, we took these three out for a walk this morning, as the clouds had actually parted and the sun was peeking out for a bit. (Not so this afternoon, the rainfall has been quite heavy at times.)
Next door, the school was having some sort of performance for parents and the general public. These are kindergartners performing some sort of dance.
You can see our building in the center-left.
Further down the street was the daily local market: fresh fruits, vegetables, seafood, and meats. Lots of tasties in season now like guava, persimmons, dragon eyes, star fruit, pomegranate, thick skinned grapes,
dragon fruit, passion fruit, mountain apples, those Korean pears, and maybe
cherimoya. Even saw some papaya, and pomelos will be coming soon.
There was an awesome looking seafood stall I didn't get a picture of, your consolation is this tub of baby turtles someone else was selling. What for, I don't know. You can find all sorts of interesting things at these markets.
I tried to get a picture of the hubbub down the street – watch out for the old women and their elbows, as Drew will tell you –, my mom's in the blue sweatshirt. This market is very small, just one street, compared to the one near my grandmother's house, purported to be one of the oldest in the city, it went on forever and ever. It wasn't until I was much older that I learned my way around that maze.
This stall was selling a large selection of pickled and prepared items, things that you serve with the meal as kind of a relish. There were bamboo shoot tips, and these sweet black beans, and what looked to be martini onions, and two flavors of gluten (think noodles but less defined and chewier), and a bunch of other things I couldn't name though I've eaten of them before and liked them.
Painted shoes. Oftentimes, there are also clothes, jewelry, hair accessories, and watches being sold at these markets. There's usually at least one herbal doctor on the street, and I even saw someone selling all manner of knives and blades.
It was getting rather hot and I'm rather fond of grass jelly, so we stopped for a drink. (The herbal doc let us sit in his shop for a bit.) On the way home, we passed by (but didn't go in) the dedicated meat market, in this instance, inside a building.
We bought these two relishes for lunch. The yellow one is slices of unripe papaya flavored with passion fruit, all sweet tart and crispy. The other is what people call Emperor's vegetable, sometimes tribute vegetable. Legend has it that the vegetable was so rare that only the emperor was allowed to eat it, it looks more
like a weed to me. But pickled with the addition of some day lily blossoms, thinly sliced Jew's ear, and a dash of sesame seed oil (among other things): awesome.
