It's Official...

I can finally say I've eaten true Chinese food.

We took the team out to the restaurant in our office building, very well known for Guangdong food, and let them order a feast for us. Among the selections were tongue, pigeon, snail (my favorite!), little shrimps that you eat with the shell on (they're better than you think), bean curd (I liked it, not sure why I avoided it so much in Taiwan), fishes with the head on (the only thing I didn't like) and more typical dishes like chicken, beef, noodles. I hold to my theory, however, that the Chinese cannot do a proper dessert, and I've pledged to bring homemade brownies for the next trip.



I finally feel like I have gotten a chance to know the team. We talked about everything: the weather of course, travel, the spring holiday (Chinese New Year), and even verboten subjects like politics and religion ("Chicago is very corrupt, yes?"), confirming yet another theory that beer builds bridges (thanks, Tsingtao!)

During one part of the conversation I think it was Brian that said he was going to go somewhere, and without thinking I replied "Do what you want, it's a free country." I don't think anybody appreciated the irony of that, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Speaking of a free country, I'm not sure who's still reading this but I myself cannot. I can bring up Blogger to create and edit posts, but I cannot view the actual blog when I'm in China. Many sites here that we can access from the US are unavailable here. (Pandora, internet radio, parts of Yahoo, Wikipedia...) So I can't wait to go home and read my own blog. I also have pictures but I'm having trouble posting them. I haven't taken many, and I have none of myself at all, but I hope to fix that when our test lead takes us around the city tomorrow night.