Cooking & Farming at Pear Orchard Temple

September 4, 2014: Shaxi, Yunnan

We got up to go to Pear Orchard Temple. On our way there, we saw a funeral ><; 

I was put into the cooking group..towards the end of preparing the food, I cut my index finger with a cleaver :( So I sat out for a bit and did everything with my other hand because I didn't want to get my blood all over the food lol. It's healing fine though; the first few days I applied Neosporin to it religiously and kept it bandaged up.

The one complaint I had with this activity was that during the prep we were told to wash the veggies 2-3 times. Two girls were doing that since there was only so much sink space, but they only washed it once, so I told them that if they only washed it once, they should do it again. One of them responded that they've already washed it thoroughly and it can't get any cleaner than that. Apparently a while later, when our guide was looking at the veggies (while I sat out), she told them that it wasn't clean enough, but by then it was too late to clean again since we were on a schedule. 

I was able to help out with the cooking still. We made eggs & tomatoes, salad, tofu, egg-battered goat cheese, traditionally steamed rice, potatoes, and probably another dish or two that I forgot. As you can see, we used GIANT woks to cook :o

After lunch, we had like two hours of free time and a few of us went to this meditation room and just fell asleep there :X It eventually got too breezy so I woke up.

Next it was time to switch off for the farm work. I don't remember if I actually was (since it was a month ago) but I remember being kind of cranky for this..hmm.. I know when our RA demonstrated it to me, I didn't expect him to do it so all I saw was an axe being flung toward me and it scared the fuck out of me D:

I hated this in the beginning because I had so much trouble with being able to cut down each stalk. Even when hacking it like 15+ times, it didn't seem to do much.. so I kept switching tools. Eventually, I got the hang of it with the machete sort of cutter. And it was quite fun actually. We only did this for about an hour or a bit more.

When we got back, we took a break before making mooncake! It's not like the lotus one that I'm used to but rather it's a more.. dry kind with a very sweet filling inside (sugar, peanuts, and other stuff).

 We had this professional mooncake baker come in to show us how it's done :O

Saw a rainbow right before dinner! It was such a nice view too!

Dinner that the second group made. 

I think that was it for the rest of the night. At midnight we sand happy birthday to one of the girls from the group.