(pictured left to right: Ayi, my friend from Germany, my Chinese friend Zhao-zhao daughter of Ayi, and food!)
I think it is normal in China for students to have two options for lunch: eating at home, or eating at the cafeteria. I don't eat at the cafeteria at all. The food is too spicy, and it just tastes gross. The cafeteria is often crowded and hot. There is hardly enough airconditioning and it smells like children who don't wear deoderant (most kids don't).
So I eat at my friend's house! Her mom makes great food and two of my exchange student friends live there so I know everybody. Usually all four exchange students (including me) will eat there along with a few of my Chinese friends. My host parents can't come home from work for lunch, and my host brother eats at his elementary school.
The person who cooks the food is my 阿姨 Ayi, or Auntie (she isn't really my Aunt I just call her that. It is a term of endearment). She is the host mom of the Brazilian exchange student and the Bolivian exchange student. She is very nice and her husband works far away for his construction company so he only comes home once a week. And her eldest daughter is abroad for a year in Denmark, while her youngest daughter (my good friend) studies often. I think she is a bit lonely. We chat in Chinese and I can understand her perfectly. Now I can even understand her more when she speaks the Chongqing dialect. Before it was unintelligable to me!
Sometimes I cannot understand my host parents very well, even though their Mandarin is good, they have a strange accent. Either that or my brain is just fried by the time I get home that it takes a little while for me to concentrate and understand the Chinese. Probably the latter.
Anyways back to lunch:
Usually there are two meat dishes, one vegetable dish, one soup (however in this picture there are two...leftovers), and of course rice in your bowl! I don't usually have soup because you ladle it into your rice bowl and once I am done with my rice I am full. You eat the rice after all the meat and vegetable dishes are through. If you eat the rice to early people will think you are filling up on rice because you don't like the food.
And don't worry I will never be starved here. On the contrary from breakfast 'til dinner I am at a constant full. It is kind of a problem. I have explained to my host family that I can't eat that much...So they think that I don't like their food. Then they take me to the grocery store which, of course, is mainly Chinese food that I have never had. They ask me "Do you like this?" I say "I don't know because I haven't eaten it before." My host parents then think that I don't like Chinese food. Often I am asked by them if I am "used to Chinese food yet" and I say yes.
I have asked my AFS coordinator at school to intervene so I don't offend them soon. Hopefully it all goes well!
6 comments:
A-
That lunch looks really good. See if you can get some reciepes. I will give them a try here in Tucson.
In Japan everyone was feeding us a ton too. Apparently Yuma told his parents I don't eat very much, but still, I was really full all the time. >< lol. But then all the Japanese people eat everything! How do they do that!? And then they're so skinny too! Crazy. xD
I will try to get some recipes, but they may be in Chinese! I can translate them though!
Xukare:
Yeah I have no idea how they stay so skinny, they only have PE 3 times a week and usually they don't participate because it isn't taken very seriously!
Arthur,
How is your Ayi able to have two kids? Do you pay your host family for room and board?
My Ayi had to pay a considerable amount of money when she had her second child, I think the amount is close to $2000. I don't know why she chose to have another child, or if it was a choice...all she told me was "是我们的事情没有关系的." But I was curious myself!
I do not pay my host family anything, it is strictly volunteering. They have to want me to live with them, and that way they don't just care about the money :)
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