Quails eggs, Duck's Blood, and Brains..oh my!

“Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.” 

– Frank Herbert
 

To celebrate me moving into the apartment my two wonderful roommates took me for hot pot!  

(You might remember this from an earlier post.  Each table has a heating element where you place different foods into boiling broth to cook.  It's so fun!) 

This is Xiang Xiang, and she is so sweet!  Her English is not amazing (though far better than my Chinese) but she is so eager to be my friend and to help me with everything.  She can't wait to show me the best markets and stores in Xiao Shan and she asks me a million questions about my job, my friends, my family, etc.  I think having a foreign roommate is quite the novelty, I don't care because I adore her! 

The girls ordered everything for our dinner.  They would look up the English word for each thing on their phones and their phones and then ask me, "Do you like?"  And for every item, no matter what it was, I said, "Yes".  They were going to so much trouble, how could I be picky?  What resulted was a table full of totally unrecognizable food. From the front to the back: spicy corn, a cold sweet mushroom jelly, tomato broth, some kind of sweet lemon spritzer drink, sliced mutton, duck's blood (congealed and cubed), egg dumplings, shrimp balls, fish balls, brain, sprouts, watermelon, and something else that I never figured out.

When they brought the noodles to the table, the noodle man came out and did a fancy demonstration of how they hand stretch the dough.  He was like a noodle ninja, throwing the dough over his head and under his arms.  Rachel, my other roommate, asked him to come back to the table three times insisting that I get a decent action shot with my camera.  I'm so glad that she has no problem being aggressive, because I totally wanted the picture.

Xiang Xiang and the noodle man.  I love this picture because Xiang Xiang is so cute!  Rachel and I poke fun at her because she makes the most hilarious expressions.

Front to back: Fish balls, pig's brain, rice cakes, and watermelon.  I actually really liked the fish balls and the rice cakes.  I know that most of the food sounds weird and gross, but it's shockingly delicious.  These girls wouldn't eat it if it wasn't good, right? (Not pictured: quail's eggs, loved them!)

This my other roommate Feng (she told me to call her Rachel, a name she chose after her favorite TV show- Friends!)  Xiang and Rachel have been giving me a hard time about 'My American Smile' they can't believe that I always smile with my teeth showing.  I talked Rachel into posing with this toothy grin because I said she'd look happier in the photo.  When she saw it she said the smile made her face look fat.  Sheesh.

So far they've taken probably 30 pictures of me to show their friends and family.  Which is fine by me because I wanted to take their picture too!

Me trying the demure, closed lip smile with Rachel. Hate it.  Rachel is wonderful, she's from Shanghai and moved to Xiao Shan for work.  She's a super smart, fashionable, modern career woman with a heart of gold.  She's very interested in American culture and actually plans on visiting Chicago this December.

Has anyone ever seen this fruit before?  It kind of tastes like a crab apple but there was no English translation when they typed it into their dictionaries.  Rachel and Xiang were shocked that I'd never seen it before, I figured it's probably regional.

The brain!!  This is Rachel's favorite and she was eager for me to try it. 

 So of course I couldn't say no.......

Here it goes.............

 

 So it was super disgusting.  Like really disgusting. I ate half of it to be polite but it was mushy and flavorless.  Blech!  Xiang thought it was pretty funny that I was eating brain, she refused agreeing with me that it was too soft to enjoy. 

 Hot pot took about 3 hours to finish and afterwards Rachel wanted to go "shopping" which in China means window shopping, a favorite pass time for Chinese girls.  We ended up going into an international supermarket and I bought dessert.  Neither of the girls had ever had wine (not many Chinese women drink) so I splurged and bought an over-priced bottle of Chianti.  We took it back to the apartment and stayed up late talking and listening to terrible American music. (The girls wanted to show me their love for ballads from the 1970s).  We had the best time!