When You Have to Ask, You Usually Don't Want to Know...

OK, so I may be able to communicate fairly well in this country, even here in Guangzhou where Cantonese is more commonly spoken. I am pretty comfortable asking for directions (and understanding the answer), negotiating prices, talking about my family, and even helping travel-group friends find their missing wallet and passport at the local amusement park (another story in and of itself...to be a part of a potential mini-series entitled "The Adventures of Lisa and Stan)...

I am NOT, however, very good at ordering food. Nope. I may know how to say the words for the major types of meats and the major types of vegetables. I may know how to ask for dumplings and noodles with no problem. But ordering a meal for a group in China is truly an art form. Put my adventuresome self with a table full of American adoptive parent friends and put me in charge of ordering for the group--let's just say you never know what might show up on the table for dinner.

And we didn't even know what some of it really was until 48 hours later.

So, backing up to Monday evening, after a full day of shopping at the pearl market, getting carsick after McDonald's, chilling in the hotel room, and walking around the local park, we decided to try a local Cantonese restaurant our guides had recommended. When we found the place, we were faced with tanks full of sea creatures and reptiles which we decided not to spend very much time looking over in favor of looking at the finished product on the menu photos instead. Our friends' 12-year-old daughter helped me navigate the menu, but oftentimes the photos were not very clear exactly what the dish contained, and the written descriptions (when I could read the characters) don't always tell you much about the actual contents either as the Chinese names are often more like literature or poetry ("fragrant freshnesses" and such).

Yuan Yuan and I actually eventually did head outside to choose a fish from the tanks at the strong urging of the wait staff (which didn't speak much Mandarin, mostly Cantonese). How to choose fish? I am not a fisherman...and generally buy fish from a case in a supermarket with labels that are very clear. I don't usually see my dinner swimming around just moments before it appears on my table. But, choose I did. I think it was a flounder (a flat fish with an eye on the upper side?) My dad would know what it was. I just knew it was not an eel or a turtle or an alligator tail or any other bizarre delicacy that none of us was eager to taste.

So, as the food came, we enjoyed it all, still not entirely sure what most of it was and finding that the noodles seemed a little rubbery but enjoying it nonetheless. Ya Ya ate it all with relish...the rest of us ate it all and felt mostly satisfied. But by the end of the meal, most everyone was making comments like "I could sure go for a Snickers bar." or "I'm in the mood for some ice cream" and what not. It made me feel bad that we had not ordered enough food and it was also not delicious enough that we wanted to order another dish or two to really fill us up. Instead we stopped for McDonald's ice cream cones on the way back to the hotel,laughing at the adventure of ordering food with a very large communication gap.

So, fast forward two days to tonight. I invited our CCAI guides to join our family and a few others for dinner so I could learn about ordering Cantonese food. Maggie and Grace are awesome, and happily agreed to come when they heard about my epic fail in ordering for our group. As they perused the menu, they invited me to look at it with them to tell me more about what the dishes are. When I saw on the menu one of the dishes we had ordered just 2 days prior, I asked them what it was (as the noodles had been so rubbery...we had thought maybe they were seaweed or something). Imagine the shock when they told me that what we had consumed was...GOOSE INTESTINES. Oh my word. Did we ever laugh. And I am pretty certain my friends will never EVER allow me to order food for them again.

They ordered an amazing array of delicious foods and every last bite was sumptious. We practically licked the plates clean. Food is important--it felt so good to be free of the responsibility of ordering for others. But we still do need to eat for a few more nights here...Grace and Maggie recommended another restaurant for another night--a Mongolian place--and assured me there is nothing weird on that menu. We shall see!