Brazilian food / park
Tonight I went to a Brazilian restaurant with Aaron and Ivy. Aaron’s buddy owns the restaurant, which he basically described as an all you can eat meat fest. Well…..that was a pretty accurate description. Waiters came around with skewers of various types of meat and would give you some if you wanted it. They had sooo many different kinds of food that I couldn’t believe it. There was also a cold buffet with different types of fruits salads, soups, and vegetables. They had this kind of lechee nut that I had never eaten which was REALLY good. I ate about 100 of them.
I also managed to try a few funky dishes. The first was chicken heart. Aaron and Ivy both really liked them and insisted that I give it a try. I didn’t like it all that much, but it might have just been how it was cooked – BBQ-ed and charred. I also tried cow tongue. We didn’t know what it was at first but it looked good so I gave it a try. It was really tender and squishy…..so much so that it caused me not to enjoy it. But hey….I can now say that I have eaten cow tongue and chicken heart 
Our next stop was the park by BeiGuo shopping center. It was dark out so we really couldn’t see anything, but I got a good feeling of just how big the park really is. We walked around for nearly an hour and didn’t come close to seeing it all. There was a shopping center, huge water fountain, stage, theatre, several lakes, a bar, a convention center, etc. It went on and on and on. There were people doing tai chi, practicing kung fu, practicing sword movements, playing instruments together, etc. In one corner, there were about 70 young kids doing some kind of line dance to techno music.
My favorite thing though was top whipping. Two guys had giant whips that they would use to hit a big wood top and keep it spinning. Me and Aaron stopped at a bit of a distance to watch while Ivy just walked up and started grabbing their supplies and checking things out without even asking them. She is so funny in how curious and carefree she can be. The two guys didn’t mind at all and showed her how to use the whip she had picked up. Pretty soon they gave Aaron and I their whips and started a second top spinning for us. It was a lot of fun and really cool to see how friendly they were.
November 19th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Well I’VE eaten horse sushi! Beat that!
November 19th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
I don’t think it is as bad as horse sushi, but yesterday I ate an ass sandwich (as in donkey, not a person’s butt)
Andy
November 19th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
Te envidio por la comida brasilera que comiste.. me parece muy buena y por lo que veo a ti te gusto tambien.. Parece que ya te estas envolviendo mucho mas en la cultura de alla por tus escritos ultimos. Muy bueno!! SI en alguna ocasion necesitas una translacion o algo asi que no quieras preguntarle a Aaron o Ivy, yo tengo un companero de trabajo Chino que habla el idioma muy bien… Cuidate!
November 20th, 2005 at 9:59 am
You really are having a great tiime experiencing exotic cuisines. Do the DVD’s you get there
give you the option to view in Chinese sub titles? How many hours per day are you spending in instruction? When you are out with your buddies do you converse in English or Chinese?
Happy Thanksgiving Cow Tongue!
Love,
Gramps
November 21st, 2005 at 4:01 am
John……si….mi gusto
Jerome……All the DVDs I have bought have both Chinese and English audio tracks and subtitles. I have 4 hours a day of 1 on 1 instruction. I speak Chinese whenever I can, but that means I spend 97% of the time in English
November 21st, 2005 at 8:44 am
Way to go, Andy. Beef tongue, which is the same as cow tongue, was a Jewish delicatessen item that my parents and their friends adored. It was cured, like pastrami and corned beef, and whenever they bought deli for a buffet, they always got tongue. I never like it because of the scratchy exterior. You can stil get it in delis here. Bravo for being adventurous. Love, Mom
November 24th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Mom….I don’t like it either….but I can now say that I have eaten it
May 13th, 2006 at 4:47 am
Did your friends tell you that this top game is called, “Beat the Lazy Wife”? I’m not kidding–that is the literal translation from Chinese to English. I’m sure your mandarin is better than mine, so you can translate it back into Chinese.
May 13th, 2006 at 6:00 am
Anne…..no….I never heard that…..quite interesting