Western Lunch

Yesterday when we were on our way to one of our usual lunch restaurants, we passed by a new western restaurant, and the woman outside handed us menus. The front of the menu says in large print "WALK TIME" and underneath in small print "Please.flower me". We spend a good portion of our lunch drooling over the menu, as we've had western food maybe once or twice since we've been here, and making fun of the English translations. The most interesting thing about the translations is that they don't ever stick to one spelling. Here are a few examples: "spughetti, spaghetti, spayhetti", "sandwick, sandwith, sandwich", "friedrice, friderice, froderoce". By the end of the meal, we decided that we had to go to this place for lunch the next day (today), and we even got an okay from our three Chinese coworkers we always eat with (their English names are Apple, Kitty, and Tweety).

Nathan and I spent a good portion of the morning discussing what it was we wanted to order for lunch, since we had the menu, and being excited about eating western food with our coworkers. We clearly walked ahead of our coworkers on the way there, and when we got to the restaurant, they kinda gave us a weird look, but then followed us in. We had of course by this time decided exactly what it was we wanted to eat, but the three of them sat there flipping through the menu for a good 15 minutes, seemingly quite confused as to what they should order. Mind you all three of these coworkers generally eat kung pao chicken for lunch almost every day. After having a bunch of conversations with the waitress and each other they finally ordered, though Nathan and I could tell they weren't so happy. A minute later, the waitress brought out small plates, forks, knives, and spoons. Tweety picked up the fork with a look of confusion, clearly thinking "I don't know how to use this!". Nathan and I did some demonstrations and at the same time got really excited to see her attempts to use a fork.

My salad showed up first, and I was ecstatic. I hadn't had a salad or even anything salad-like since I'd been here. I ate it pretty quickly all the while my coworkers stared at me using my fork so fluidly. Tweety's beef with rice showed up (very adventurous choice I know), and her immediate reaction was "panzi hen da!!" (the plate is so big!!) Now she was actually referring to the plate itself, as plates in China are generally not larger than 6 or 7 inches in diameter. She started attempting to eat with a fork, but was having a really hard time with the concept of stabbing the pieces of meat. Nathan helped her out a bit, but meanwhile we were both holding ourselves back from laughing hysterically. Our (Nathan and my) pasta dishes showed up and we started eating as well.

It was now 1pm, and our lunch break is only from 12:30-1:30. Apple looks at her phone for the time and immediately yells to the waitress to hurry up because we need to go back to work. This recurrs probably 4 or 5 times before they get their food. Apple ordered some chicken wings and split a tuna sandwich with Tweety, and Kitty ordered a pasta dish with seafood. The entire meal was entertaining just watching them figure out how to deal with forks and hands (for the sandwich). Tweety ended up eating it with a fork because she couldn't deal with it with her hands.

When we finished eating, we asked our coworkers what they thought, and they were like American food is just sandwiches and pasta, and they went on about how Chinese food has so many more options for dishes, so they like it a lot better. We of course countered this with the fact that there are a ton of options for food in the US (not to mention the fact that they still eat the same thing for lunch every day) and that Americans feel the same way about Chinese food. By the time we paid, it was 1:32pm, and the three of them ran in front of us (yes...ran) to get back to the office. Of course, we were in no rush seeing as we have no real work to do at the office...

I think for our last three days of work, we'll stick with Chinese food so as not to overwhelm our coworkers.