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In China, it is a great honor when a Chinese person accepts you into their circle of friends and invites you for a meal. One day after our very brutal Mandarin lesson my teacher Kim invites me for lunch. (BTW, I gave my teacher her English name Kim :)
She first asks me if I like see food and being the brave person that I am without hesitating I said "yes, of course". You see when someone mentions seafood in the U.S. it's the usual, shrimp, calamari, fish, oysters all the well known sea creatures that we all know and love. When someone mentions seafood in China, surprise surprise, it's not always what you expect.
I mentioned to Kim that I LOVE crab and shrimp, so she made sure to order it for me. She was very excited to say, " I ordered something special for you to try". My eyes opened wide when the waiter comes in with a black prickly thing that was still moving on my plate. lol If you've ever tried sea urchin you know that it's served alive. I guess it's the most tasteful. Kim looks at me with those exciting eyes of hers only waiting for me to take my first bite. I had this big smile on my face, held my breath (because it still smelled fishy) and went for it.
You'll all be surprised to know that Maria Lagos is still alive after that gutsy adventure! lol
This particular sea urchin was served with soy sauce mixed with ginger. It's supposed to take the fishy taste away. Did it work? Not really. Let's just say this particular seafood is not my top 10. It's a different experience when you eat something alive. All the guts and legs moving is not very appealing. Would I try it again? Probably. Would I cook it at home? Maybe not.
But overall it was one of those things that you'll always remember and can be proud of trying.
Kim
Doesn't that look just delicious!
Here goes nothing.
My favorite.
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Arturo and Maria Lagos
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I (Maria) never thought I would enjoy teaching as much as I do in China. I finally found my calling and what I'm good at. I teach English to Jr. Hight students. I know what you're probably thinking JR HIGH?! Yes, Jr. High. Jr. High in China is very different from the U.S. They are eager to learn, especially from a foreigner. They feel sincerely privileged to be taught by a native speaker, that they look forward to each lesson.
I've spoken to teachers from the U.S. that have taught Jr. High and I they can't believe how different Chinese students are to American students. First of all, most Chinese Elementary and Jr. High students attend school from 7am-5pm Mon- Fri. Not to mention they have tons of homework that takes them until 11pm to complete. When I told my class that most American students attend class from 8am-3pm they couldn't believe it.
In class students are very disciplined, they don't speak unless spoken to. Which can be a good and bad thing. At first it was hard to get them to participate. (To this day I struggle but not nearly as much as I did the first day. ) I would think to myself, " are they scared of me?" "Am I intimidating?" The truth is they were trained not to raise their hands for questions, brainstorm as a class or do games. I changed all that within a week and I could tell that it was different to them. At first I would get the "deer in the headlights" look, but I found that they enjoy American style lessons.
I prepare slideshows and they enjoy all the funny illustrations that I use to get my point across. I can't lie, it's nice to be called Mrs. Lagos. :) Some also call me Mrs. Teacher, I'm trying to fix that. lol
You can see how attentive the students are in the pictures. And nooo it wasn't just for the camera, my kids are so well behaved. :)
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Pictures taken on October 2009
After taking a nice walk around Xinghai Square we saw this cool ride that just by looking at it gave us butterflies. The park has a reasonable size amusement park with a few accelerating rides and this ride was something we've never tried before. We've seen these type of rides in the U.S. but never had the guts to get on one. We figured since we're in China, what the hell, everything is an adventure.
aaaayyyyy mama!
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Pictures were taken in August
After Arturo did his crazy bungee jump ( pictures shown in previous post ) we went to Tiger Beach, it was on the way home. What really caught our attention were these really cool gigantic tigers.
Not much else to tell about Tiger Beach unfortunately since we were only there for a short time but we still wanted to share the photos.
There were many kites in the area but none of them were like this one guy's kite. As you can see below this kite goes for miles. We've never seen anything like it before so our mouths were wide opened. lol :)
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We try to do as much exploring as possible on the weekends. This beach is only 20 minutes from our house. This particular weekend Arturo wanted to be gutsy and try grilled squid for the first time. I ( Maria) have tried squid before but never like this. The legs are all over the place and bottom line it does not look appetizing! I couldn't believe my ears when Arturo said he wanted to try it. To my surprise he actually liked it. He also tried this long looking fish ( picture below) and also liked it. As for me, I didn't like the fish because it had teeny tiny bones, which for the record Arturo ate. I didn't enjoy the squid because it was way too chewy and just the look of it made my stomach curl. ha ha
Got to admit I was proud of the guy for trying it!
This was what I ( Maria) ordered. I know what your probably thinking, that doesn't look any better right? Truth is, it wasn't. If you don't know what it is yet, it's clams and oysters. A guy warms it up for you on a grill and then serves it plain. No lemon, no salt, no sauce of any kind! Way too fishy I gotta say!
Besides Golden Pebble Beach being a good area for exploring different types of food, it also has some really beautiful scenic spots.
These are just some of the surrounding areas.
What a beach looks like in China with no people.
This picture was taken in the morning on a weekday before anyone showed up for the beach rush hour.
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So our driver Lian- Zeng (English name Tom) came over to our house to teach me ( Maria) how to make Kung-Pao Chicken. Mmmm
This is him getting ready to do some REAL cooking!
Mixing the chicken in egg an flower.
Frying the peanuts.
All the ingredients cut up and ready to mix.
Mmmmm good!
Someone couldn't wait! lol
Recipe:
Serves 3 to 4
Ingredients:
- 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, 7 to 8 ounces each
- Marinade:
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
- Sauce:
- 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- Other:
- 8 small dried red chili peppers
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 green onions (spring onions, scallions)
- 4 tablespoons oil for stir-frying, or as needed
- 1 teaspoon Szechuan peppercorn, optional
- 1/2 cup peanuts or cashews
- a few drops sesame oil, optional
Preparation:
Cut the chicken into 1-inch cubes. Combine with the marinade ingredients, adding the cornstarch last. Marinate the chicken for 25 minutes.
While the chicken is marinating, prepare the sauce and vegetables: In a small bowl, combine the dark soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar. Set aside.
Cut the chilies in half so that they are approximately the same size as the chicken cubes. Remove the seeds. Peel and finely chop the garlic. Cut the green onion on the diagonal into thirds.
Heat the wok over medium-high to high heat. Add 2 tablespoons oil. When the oil is hot, add the chicken. Stir-fry until it turns white and is 80 percent cooked. Remove from the wok.
Add 2 tablespoons oil. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and stir-fry until aromatic (about 30 seconds). Add the chili peppers and the Szechuan peppercorn if using. Stir-fry briefly until they turn dark red.
Add the sauce to the wok. Bring to a boil. Add the chicken back into the pan. Stir in the peanuts and the green onion. Remove from the heat and stir in the sesame oil. Serve hot.
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Benxi like Dalian is located in the Liaoning Province of China, Southeast of Shenyang. Benxi has the longest underground water cave in Asia, which was hollowed out about 5 million years ago.
As you can see in the above picture the entrance is a huge portal, about 25m wide and 7m high. Right behind the entrance follows a huge chamber with a pier big enough for 40 boats. The cave river is really enormous, with an average production of 230 liters per second. the river is up to 7m deep and the passage is up to 38m and 50m wide. They also found 3000 year old human remains.
It definitely was one of the best and most interesting places we have gone to thus far.
To learn more about Benxi's Water Cave you can go to http://www.luopan.com/t/en_US/117000L000001.html
Before we go to the water part of the cave, we had to walk through a huge tunnel. Then they get you on a boat (may we mention the boat was jammed packed like everywhere else in China lol) and it takes about 45 minutes to get to the end of the cave and back.
Inside the cave.
They had it all lit up with different colored lights.
It was a beautiful sight to see. We felt so lucky to see such a wonder.
Dinosaurs
The Benxi National Park also has Fossilized Tree Trunks. Very cool!
Surrounding area. Very beautiful!
Beautiful view, we just had to take a picture.
Just to share with you guys we were planning on spending the night in Benxi but had no luck finding a hotel room. We made the mistake of traveling on a huge Chinese Holiday, Moon Cake Festival and did not book a room in advance. We went to 8 hotels looking for rooms at nine o'clock at night. Some were 5 star hotels and some were NO STAR HOTELS, which by the way, the NO STAR hotels didn't except foreigners. Which we then later found out that hotels have to obtain a license to service foreigners. We felt so discriminated ha ha ! :( j/k We probably didn't want to stay at those places anyway. We heard horror stories.
So then we had to have our poor driver Tom, drive home for about 5 hours all because we couldn't find a damn hotel.
Moral of the story: assure a bed to sleep before you leave on a trip dumb ass!