Bai Jou and Crazy Stuff Like That

I just had the most interesting meal. In celebration of China's national holiday, we were invited to attend a dinner party hosted by the city for all foreign experts including teachers, businessmen, and expats. On October 1, 1949 China become the People's Republic of China, and this day is very important here. There was a little program with singing and dancing very much like the teachers' day program. What was most fun was the meal. There were SO many different dishes. The first included pig tongue, liver, skin, and who knows what... Grace wouldn't tell me. I was the first to try one of the unknown things and the skin. Hey, when in Rome, eh? The others were shocked that little ol' Leah had such guts. It was quite fun. I tried it all.... al but the tongue. I just couldn't do it. The rest of the meal included things like jelly fish, fried sea worms, fish meat balls, prawns (yum), nice fish, clams, beaf, pork, chicken (head included of course), steamed bread, two kinds of soup, wine, pop, tea.... so much I can't remember it all. Another crazy thing I tried was Bai Jou. It is a famous rice wine... 56%! The had tiny little glasses for it. The bottle that they poor it out of literally looks like a transmission fluid bottle. The smell was enough to singe your nose hairs. So I tried a tiny glass. Yikes. Another interesting thing that happened was we were introduced to the Mayor of population 7 million Zhanjiang. He was a nice guy and greeted every table. The vice President of our school, Mrs. Liew, was with us and told us that his kids attend our school. So jokingly Martin said that since we have to hook up we should have dinner with the Mayor sometime. Some how it got around, and now we have a dinner date with the Mayor and we are cooking!! How cool is that.

If you're interested, you can read about the hurricane that JUST missed us here in Zhanjiang:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5306238,00.html