Scorpions, Duck Heads and Jingle Bells

Ok ok, sorry this one took a long time too...

A few weeks ago the three of us girls met up with Ginger (the awesome ex-hippy-esque woman who's retired, living in Mexico, but doing a short teaching stint in Chengde after the tour of China she took last year left her wanting more) and her 12 year old boyfriend, Ie Guong. Ie Guong (pronounced ee-gwong) hates the English name Cathy Lee tried to give him, Igby, and barters with people as if he's a 60 year old man. He's great. But getting to the meat of the story...

First we went to a coat place down the street. By coat place I mean tiny sweat shop looking room with down floating wildly through the air. This was where we were to get out winter coats made. And let me tell you, I was in heaven. They specialize in water resistant, poofy jackets, which is just fine with me, so after much careful deliberation I requested a kelly green, mid-thigh length coat with white racing stripes down the sleeves and white on the inside. This coat is also the best coat ever because it has stretchy fabric around the neck, cuffs and bottom. If it's hard for you to imagine the glory that is my new, custom made to fit my body like a glove, coat then I'm sorry, you'll just have to see it next year.

Moving on, Ie Guong was getting cranky (and more and more like a 70 year old man...) so he took us to a new place in town that specializes in Peking Duck. I was excited because my only experience with Peking Duck so far has been with eating it out of a vacuum sealed bag on the way to Xi'an. It's a beautiful place- kind of outside, but kind of not... anyway Ginger took one look at the menu and decided that we should get scorpions. I was in. So before our duck is ready, out comes a pretty big platter of fried scorpions resting in little rice cups (that look and taste more like styrofoam than rice). After taking sufficient pictures, a claw gets popped into my mouth, and then another, and then the whole body. It really wasn't bad after you get over the fact that you're chewing up a scorpion. It tasted kind of like popcorn. I'd eat 'em again, what can I say. THEN to make this restaurant visit even better... after we eat the duck (which was awesome, but very very greasy) we get the head, split in two, right down the middle. Ie Guong was pumped and reached for one half, while I gingerly picked up the other with my chop sticks. I know what you're thinking... HECK YES! I ate that duck brain! and an eyeball for good measure...

As if this post couldn't get any better I have one more bit of information you'd probably like to know...
Andrea and I are Chinese super stars.
Last week was "performance week" at our school. All the classes sang and danced and played guitars, etc etc. Before knowing what we were getting into, we were asked to teach a few girls Jingle Bells. We found out that "a few" meant 70. So, not only did we become awesome choir directors BUT after practice they asked us to perform with them the following night. Uhh... sure... THEN on top of that we find out that we have solos. This is too good to miss so Cathy Lee, Tricia and Keir come too (don't worry, Cathy Lee took video). Long story short; Andrea and I sang Jingle Bells in front of 200 plus med students, her mic didn't work so you could only hear me during our "solo" aaaaaaaaand we took first place! We've got an encore performance today at 2 o'clock. I hear it's can't miss....

The end