gou rou

Well you guessed it. I DID IT. I ATE IT. Gou rou. Dog meat. The people who manage our teacher cafeteria, or something, put together a nice, special lunch for an end of the semester celebration. Still held in our little canteen, we had lamb, dog, fish, veggies, soup, beer. I don't have any pictures for you, but for those of you who can understand this, it looked a lot like ngow lam. Braised beef something. I avoided the dog for a little while, then picked a tiny piece, which sat in the corner of my tray for most of the meal while I ate the other things (except the lamb, of which I only had one piece because I generally don't like lamb. except the heavily spiced skewers from street food, or the little lamb hot pot restaurant, which is actually really good). I ate the other things and eyed the piece of meat. I knew I would eat it, but it took me a while to actually do it. When I finally did it, it was fine. Tasted almost just like beef. Tender. Not bad at all. I even chose a slightly bigger piece to be able to taste it better. I don't think I'll ever eat it again, but overall, not a bad experience. Lesson to be learned: sometimes you should just put aside your western prejudices/customs and try something new. And meat is meat. I eat cow. I eat pig. What's the difference with dog? These particular dogs are raised for food, not for pets, as my contact teacher Anne said.

Helen, the owner of the recording company I work for, seems to like me and my voice a lot. She's a really nice woman from Xi'an (she offered me her brother's place to stay when I went, but I declined), who is famous in Xi'an and Shenzhen from her days as tv personality. News anchorwoman, I think. Anyhow, she also does video recordings. Not sure exactly what they are for, private or public video/television, but they are english instructional programs. She asked my advice last week when she came to our chinese class about who I thought would be good for a show she's filming. She ultimately chose a couple herself, but she gave me a call today and asked if I would be in it, for a pronunciation/phonics part, and for some conversation bits. Normally I think things like this call for caucasian faces, but for some reason she thinks I"ll do a good job. So on sunday, I'll spend a lot of time at the BaoAn shenzhen tv station making a video. I won't be getting paid a whole lot of money since my actual recording time will be about 2 hours, but I'll have to wait around for the whole group and takes and makeup or whatever. strange huh? who would've thought?