This is definitely NOT Panda Express.

Taken from Email #1, 5/24/11

Hmmmm... the food. Where to begin.. well... it's not my beloved Panda Express, that's for sure.

-First of all, they just bring out TONS of different foods and put it on this big rotating thing in the middle (lazy susan) and we all spin it around and take what we want. When I say TONS of food, I mean we were stuffing ourselves trying not to waste it and only ate about 1/4 of it.

-They have tons of different kinds of food out - all wierd. I only tried little bites of everything because I didn't end up particularly liking anything except the fruit and I was still stuffed. It's all food they're very proud of that is specific to this part of China. A lot of the group loves the food, but to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of this fancy cuisine. Luckily, they don't get offended if we don't eat the food we don't like. :)

 -CHOPSTICKS. yeah...... never learned how to use those. Somehow almost everyone else in our group is pro at using them, and the other girls in our group who aren't, either picked it up super fast (thanks for making me look incompetent guys), or just gave up after the first try and used their forks. So far the average amount of tries it takes me to pick something up is about 7. Everyone, Chinese and Americans alike, has some hardy laughter at my expense as my food goes sliding around my plate until half the time I just end up stabbing it with my chopstick to pick it up. I'm determined to learn how to use these difficult little utensils though, even if it takes the whole two months. After all, how lame would it be to come back and still not know how to use them?

-We went to a nice restaurant for dinner last night, with really wierd food. The food we had for lunch yesterday wasn't delicious, but I could definitely eat it. This stuff was nasty. The meal started out with them handing me a plastic glove and sticking a giant slab of "chicken" on my plate (which was blood red and looked like a heart), and then telling me to dig in! mmm yeah... try as I did to find somewhere to bite, all I found was pure fat. I found out later in the meal that the "chicken" was pig foot. I don't recommend it. Our meal also included:
-"soup" we're pretty sure was just hot water and rice
-cucumbers dipped in strange sour sauce
-rice pancake things that looked normal but were most definitely not
-lots of bone-in chicken
-frogs that still looked like frogs
there are two things I don't ever try because I know I'll gag eating them:  fish, and things that still have all their limbs attached. I kind of wish I would have tried just a bite, but then I remember watching the frog fly onto another girl's lap. sick. It was definitely an experience.

Our grand entrance :) Warm welcomes everywhere we go!

-pizza and french fries! that's what we had for lunch today! In this really nice restaurant. It was pretty funny because we all went into a tiny VIP room and then they decided to split us up into the two rooms so we would be more comfortable...

well.. there was one major flaw with that plan...

the translators were all in the half that went in the other room!

 haha!

 

So we all sat around for about 45 minutes, we looked through a menu we couldn't understand, avoided drinking the boiling hot water they gave us, chatted, and waited patiently for our food. Well after a while one of the translators came in and looking at our empty plates, said "You finished your food?!?" Nope, we told him they hadn't brought us food yet. Turns out the other group was almost finished with the giant meal. Our meal included: fruit covered in RANCH, salad, fishy pizza, pepperoni pizza, french fries, and enchiladas with yogurt. ha.

Fruit and ranch - there's a reason we don't have this in America... not so delish.

-I think my stomach is shrinking, remember how I can usually eat and eat and eat and eat? well I can't anymore, be prepared for a skinnier Tiana.