My favorite part about extended travel is that, perhaps ironically, one does not always have to travel. If I’m tired, sick, annoyed, or just want to spend time reading, I can. I don’t have just ten days in which I have to do absolutely everything. This is important because traveling is definitely tiring. Thus, I am a firm believer in taking multiple rest days. These are just days in which we don’t have to go out, see something, visit a museum, or whatever. We can just take it easy and charge our batteries for later.

Today was our first rest day. Because we’re also working while traveling, it substituted is a catch up on work day. We stayed in the hotel, put up the do not disturb sign on the door, and did what everyone does when the do not disturb sign is on the door–hammered away at our laptops. At lunch we ran over to my grandma’s to carbo load and then went back to the hotel to continue hammering. The picture above is an awesome shirt I saw the previous day (rest days don’t make for very good pictures). I wanted to buy it, but there is no context in which I could wear it and not get beat up.

At night, we partook in the ancient Chinese tradition of burning ourselves with scalding broth, better known as hot pot. To the uninitiated, there’s a big vat of boiling soup in the middle of the table and customers order raw ingredients, always including lamb. Then everyone grabs a raw ingredient and dunks it into the boiling soup, thus cooking it. There’s a comprehensive sauce and condiments bar somewhere in the restaurant where customers can create their own dipping sauces for their self-cooked food. Rinse and repeat (literally) until full.

Hot pot