School Dinner

This post is more for my memory bank than anything else. It was a while ago so the memory is already fading fast. I should have written this at the time but there was the exciting event of Mum and Dad arriving the next day so my lunchtime stories took a backseat.

On 24/03 we were taken out to lunch along with all the other English teachers in the school, which required a mystery car journey to get there (all very exciting when normally it's sub-par school dinners for lunch).

Our destination was a restaurant which served Hunnan style food, Hunnan is a province to the north-east of me. The food was very tasty but despite my questioning no-one seemed to be able to give me an answer as to what is characteristic or distinctive of Hunnan cuisine. We had were provided with quite a spread which satisfied all the seeming criteria required for group dining in China. The dishes included : a fish dish, which was picked completely clean during the chopstick feeding frenzy, beans, Chinese spring greens (these are always me nemesis at such occasions because I can never bite the tough stalks in half - i'm definitely having words with the dentist about my 'perfect bite' when I return because I disagree), another few meat dishes and some tasty sweet spring roll/ pastry type things (which were, strangely, delivered to the tables along with the savoury dishes). The spring rolls causes quite a heated debate when Tom and I queried their contents, After someone saying it was sweet potato one of the other teachers, who I had pegged as being quite relaxed, almost got aggressive when correcting her colleagues by saying it was taro not sweet potato. This then resulted in 12 heads swiveling in our direction to see if we agreed with the translation. In all honesty we didn't have a clue, we had never heard of taro before let alone eaten it, it's not something that is a staple part of the UK diet. I think it's safe to say we fairly ruined her moment of translating glory.

Surprisingly, for a Chinese meal, red wine was served to us all during the meal. The funny thing, just before it was poured into my glass, is I had just finished thinking that if this meal was taking place in France (where I was this time last year) the wine would have been flowing.  I genuinely questioned whether I had said this thought out-loud or not. It very quickly became apparent that my colleagues are largely not used to drinking wine. The remaining wine was poured into pitchers which quickly led to the male teachers racing round the room filling up any wine glass that was on the verge of becoming empty. The moment seemingly endless rounds of toasts began someone sensibly decided it was time we went back to work. I think there was some very excitable teachers that afternoon if the boundless giggling and rosy faces were anything to go by. 

I sound like such a party pooper but it's very strange when everyone else is very excited and happy for reasons that are completely unknown to me - I have no idea what was being said in the toasts and i'm not even sure why we went for lunch (I thought it might be rude to ask). So the only option is to be entertained by your surroundings and the cultural difference; both of which are things that never fail to entertain and educate me on a daily basis.

G x