A Fine Lunch of Baby Pigeon, Snake & BaiJiu @ the Military Training Site

All students must complete military training and this week our own students were to attend. Horn, their head teacher, had invited us to visit the training site. We arrived in a van with a few other teachers and entered the site. We were greeted by Principal Qiu, our vice principal, and several other official looking men, who led us past waving red and gold Communist flags and past children lined up in full camoflage get-up. It appeared to be much like boot camp, and I felt sorry for the group of young kids running past me in their camo in this heat. The men gave us a tour of the grounds, gardens, green house, and butterfly museum. I was reminded of times I have seen U.S. presidents visiting places and seeing them walking along with an entourage of officials, and in my head pretended that was what we were doing with Principal Qiu. Then we went to the canteen for lunch, where as usual, we accompanied Principal Qiu and his entourage into a private room. This is how he rolls. Serena and I were the youngest and only two women in this group of middle aged men, speaking mostly Chinese. As we sat down for lunch, we were provided with a pair of plastic gloves, which we learned were to be used for picking up and EATING a baby pigeon - cooked with everything (skin, head, etc) intact. It was actually pretty good. Lunch was, of course, served with BaiJiu - Chinese rice wine, very strong. And of course, each guest at the table wanted to take a shot with us. UGH - so gross! I was full, but continued to eat in order to get the taste of BaiJiu out of my mouth. I'm not gonna lie, I had a little buzz, which perhaps gave me the boldness to taste the snake dish. "Can you guess what this is, Ranjana?" Horn asked. It was obviously snake, since the snake's skin was mixed in with the meaty stew.

Speaking of Horn... he was smashed. He was sitting next to me and seemed so confused and disoriented. When I told him I had Chinese class later in the afternoon, he told me to skip, that Chinese class was STUPID, that I should just sleep through it. Then he forcefully and repeatedly toasted me, mumbling, "Bottoms up!" Serena attempted to get all of this on video on her camera. Serena was able to communicate to Principal Qiu, and he informed us that he had been to Paris twice. Principal Qiu told us that French women never get fat. "Neither do Chinese women," I said. He responded in Mandarin, "French women have the nicest legs, they are long and thin. French women have the best thighs."

"You like thighs?" I asked, testing out my Mandarin while finding this completely inappropriate conversation HIL-arious. All the men at the table laughed, and said, "good idea!" I realized I had said "ni yao" instead of "ni xihuan" - so what I had really asked: "you WANT thighs?" How embarrassing... After lunch we walked to a great hall, where hundreds of high school students stood in lines, at attention, while boot camp instructors shouted instructions to them. We were very excited to see our students among them - I felt like a proud parent and tried to get as close as possible to snap some pictures - they gave me side looks and smiled. Horn also was yelling and trying to get close to them, but we pulled him away, recommending that his students not see him so drunk! I think later he went to the bathroom to vomit :(

Principal Qiu invited us to lunch the following day to meet some men from the school in New Zealand where our students will be going to study once they graduate. Then our vice principal dropped us off at Chinese class. The following day, we jumped on a bus with several other teachers to meet Principal Qiu and the men from New Zealand for lunch. We pulled into Party City... a karaoke bar. It seemed somehow wrong to be drinking Carlsberg and singing karaoke with the principal, vice principal, fellow teachers, and the men from New Zealand at 12:00 in the afternoon, but it certainly was a lot of fun. Plus, our lunch included real waffles! Mmmm....

Rolling with the Principal is always a good time.

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