interesting night...

I, like many of you probably, used to enjoy reading about what new food Crystal had decided to try, but I never thought I'd try any of that myself. Yesterday at work I helped lead a pre-deployment training for some students who will be traveling to China in 3 weeks. After training we all went to a local Chinese restaurant for an authentic Chinese meal. This is where it got interesting. They didn't tell us what anything was before we tried it so I ended up eating chicken's feet, pigs foot, and jellyfish to start with. After that things got a little tamer and I ended up liking a few things that were brought out. One of the things that I found the most interesting was the presentation of the food. For example, the chicken was brought out and basically it had been cut up into pieces, but left on the bone, and the chicken head was still on the platter. (The host or guest of honor has the privelege of eating the chicken head.) The same with the fish. The entire thing was left in tact when it was brought to the table. I learned a lot last night (I even learned how to use chopsticks, even though I'm still super slow at it) and it was definitely a great experience, but I don't think I'll be eating any animal feet anytime in the near future!