China - Day 18

I'm posting this now, because I will not have an opportunity to post tonight. We are taking the overnight train to Xian tonight. We are going to be spending a few days there. I can't say that we have done anything today, because it is 12:00pm and we are still in the hotel room. We are finishing up packing so we can get out of the room for the half-day rate.

I don't know if we will have Internet in Xian, we should, but I don't know. If we don't, my dad has email service on his blackberry so I could post things that way. The posts wouldn't be very long though, typing on that thing takes way to long. Anyway, that is the quick update for today.
-Aaron

Update: OK, well, We've got Internet over at the house, so posting is not going to be a problem.

So, today we did a few things. We finished packing in the hotel, and stayed in the hotel to 1:00 or so. After that, we went over to the school we visited the first day. The Kids had fun learning a new song in English, and playing Simon Says.

After that, we went back to where my mom had grown up. So, we visited the gate to my mom's home "sector." We took a picture in front of that. Then, we walked down that road. My mom doesn't know exactly where her apartment was, probably because it is not there anymore (I don't know that, but there has been a lot of development in the past years). Then we went to the park that my mom used to go to when she was here in China. The park is obviously much different from when my mom was there, and she really only knew it because of the name, but she used to go there none the less. Some of the stones in the ground may be the same... We spent a lot of time in that park, till around 6:45. We had an appointment for dinner at 7:30, so we had to get over to the restaurant before then.

Dinner was good. The place we went to was called "Golden Hans." It was a brewery and a barbecue/buffet. No, we did not have any of the beer there, although I'm sure it would have been "good." We had dinner with some people we met at the service on Sunday. The barbecue was good. There was one place that they had a bid roasting oven type thing, and they put all sorts of meat on huge skewers. So, these servers would come to the table and cut off some meat onto your plate. Normally, you would only get to get one piece of each meat (there were a lot of kinds), but since we were there for dinner, we were there when the restaurant was closing So, all of the extra meat they had to get rid of (Chinese don't waste anything)they offered to us, and other patrons still there.

You may be wondering what kinds of meat were offered. I don't really remember them all, but I'll see what I can do. There was the usual, beef, lamb, chicken, pork, there were whole shrimp, there was roasted pear, roasted banana, a pork piece wrapped in bacon, Chinese sausage (no one knows what is in those), duck, and a few more. Now, there were some new meats that I have never had before, which I will tell you about. These are not really that far out there, really common in China, but hey, I'm from America.

So, we were sitting at the table, waiting for some one to bring some meat in. I had no idea what types of meat they would have on these things. I was expecting normal things (I forgot was in China). So, the first guy comes in with two skewers. One has some regular looking meat, the other one has this weird looking cut of meat.

I mean, we all know what a good cut of meat looks like. It has a meat texture, and just looks like meat. Well, this cut did not have a meat texture, it had an almost bumpy texture. Well, I can't speak Chinese. So, I have no idea what it is, but I did notice that it sort of had the shape of a tongue. To bring this paragraph to a close, my mom told me it was cow tongue.

Well, I've eaten everything we have gotten in Asia so far (we haven't gotten anything real crazy). So, I went for it. Tongue is weird. You think about it, you are using your tongue to eat a tongue...pretty gross. It didn't really taste bad though, it was just knew. I have know crossed off cow tongue as something to eat.

The next new thing that came in was really small. The tongue was huge, but now there were just these tine hunks of meat, all put on this skewer. Think of it like a schiskabob. There isn't much to say about this one, I found out what it was before I had time to guess. They were chicken hearts... oh, I just wanted to break that promise to myself right then, but I couldn't.

A chicken heart is only about the size of a quarter or so, not big at all. I cut it in half and popped it into my mouth. Chewing it for the first few seconds, nothing really stood out to me, but after a few seconds, the blood started to touch my taste buds. Now, this was a fully cooked heart, it wasn't dripping with blood, but it is still in there. Wow, the taste of that blood gave me that feeling you get when you need to throw up. I really was about halfway there to just spitting that out, and throwing up all the other meat (pretty picture so far, isn't it?). I endured though, some how I managed to get it down my throat and out of my mouth. I didn't eat the other half.

After dinner we got all of our luggage that was being stored in the hotel, and went off the the train station. Our train left at around 11:20 (supposed to leave at 1:50) and we were off to Xian.
-Aaron

The Gate to street where my mom grew up

From China Day 17

Down that road

From China Day 17

I didn't take a good shot of it, but I think this is the West entrance to the park where my mom used to come

From China Day 17

On a little stone horse

From China Day 17

Walking through

From China Day 17

From China Day 17

As far as we could tell, this is where my Grandpa used to work.

From China Day 17

Dinner. These are the big skewers. So, the servers would just cut off some meat for you. If the meat was already in small pieces, like chicken hearts, than they would just give you a whole piece.

From China Day 17