honey bread

I'm a big fan of sitting anywhere other than school or my apartment to write, work, etc. and there is a coffee shop/bakery between my apartment and school that I go to literally every day. They have wifi, which is awesome and extremely rare in Songyuan. I looooove my coffee shop.

They actually have coffee drinks too (ha), which are naturally a bit over priced due to that whole Chinese-don't-drink-coffee thing, but still really cheap by western standards. I usually drink their ginger milk tea (usually as in, I drink it enough that I no longer need to order it when I walk in); it's a little like warm, ginger flavored milk. I'm not sure what makes it a tea exactly, but I dig it.

Their baked goods are pretty tasty also, they do flaky pastry very well. Chinese bread is always pretty sweet, especially compared to western bread, and this place doesn't do whole grain or rye or anything fancy, but it's still good. Their menu varies a bit day to day and the whole thing is seasonal, so it just switched to summer. They branch out a bit from baked goods and deserts into sandwiches too, but they haven't quite gotten them down yet. The sweetness factor makes the stuff that isn't traditional baked goods a bit weird. I absolutely love that they randomly have garlic bread though.

The staff there are all really friendly, and sometimes they practice English with me or teach me bits of Chinese. They work pretty much every day, so we all know each other.

The Chinese patrons typically leave me alone, but I can always tell the ones that will eventually come up to A.) take a picture of or with me or B.) work up the courage to try to make conversation. This bugs some of the other foreigners, but I'm completely fine with it. I'll take pictures with anyone. They're all nice too.

The regulars have gotten used to seeing foreigners there. We all frequent the place; so there's a good chance of running into friends whenever I go. We all use it as a meeting spot too (if we have anything to have a meeting about, ha). It's always cool being in a small town in a foreign country and stumbling upon people you know by chance.

They always play English music there, but I'm not sure who makes their playlists. I tried asking once and I think I just confused everyone. There were some Christmas songs in heavy rotation until earlier this week when they switched to a folky, country type mix. It's kind of hard to listen to, so I made them a playlist and am going to try to get them to use it tomorrow. We'll see how that works...