07.22.07
Another Little Tour of Los Angeles
Zip, zip, zip, and the weekend is over again. . . But, not without any pictures! Brian has been taking some herbal courses and part of his assignments have been to make up herbal formulas and test them out on himself and anyone else. So we have been making trips to our local Chinese herbal shops in Chinatown. While there I was able to snap a couple pictures. Here’s one of the wall of drawers where some of their herbs are stored.
Each drawer houses different herbs, and they are labeled outside in Chinese. When you want some herbs, you just tell them which ones you want and how much in terms of ounces. They weigh each one out, then seal them up in a plastic bag. Another way to order herbs is by going through a Chinese doctor like an herbalist or acupuncturist. They can write up a prescription for you, then you take it to one of these herbal shops, and they fill it for you.
Below is a picture of someone’s herbal prescription order being filled. They weigh everything out, then they separate them in trays per tea batch. Each tray will go into an individual bag and sealed. When the person gets home, all they need to do is dump their packet of herbs in a tea pot and cook them up.
Afterwards we still wanted to stop off at the library downtown, but it was already lunch time, and I had to be fed, heheh. Lucky for me, Chinatown is right next to Little Tokyo where there is a market that sells sushi cheap! For instance Brian and I bought these two dishes for about $10.00 for both. At any other place, it would likely cost double that.
The Central Library is just a hop, skip, and a jump away. This is one of my favorite hangouts, ha! They have so many good books in there, I love it! Actually, the Central Library is the largest library west of the Mississippi. Here’s a pic of it to give you an idea of its size. I forget the exact number of floors it has, but I know it has at least six floors. The building doesn’t look like it is six floors high, and it isn’t. The library actually goes below ground several floors. 
Here’s a picture of the inside about 2 floors down. I took the shot looking back up from the escalator. This library not only has books, but it also has a small gift shop upstairs on the main floor as well as a few art galleries. Organizations like the Getty often exhibit some of their stuff here. Another nice thing about this library system is that their catalog is searchable online. I can look for books from my computer at home and reserve them from any branch within the system. Then they will deliver it to my choice library and let me know it’s ready by phone or I can just check my library record online. What service! I will say that I think the public library system is one of the best services the government provides for us. This resource has been invaluable to me from researching health issues, to amusing myself with historical texts, literary works, and hobby books like knitting. They have DVDs, VHS, CDs, language books and cassettes, etc. All for free. It’s such a shame not more people take advantage of the library. It’s wonderful.
Oop! I hear my family starting up a movie! I’d better stop for now and see what I’m missing! Will have to continue later.
Marlakins 
