We left the massage place at about 12:00 and were off to our last
destination the Tea House. We had all (stupidly) assumed she meant
the tea house that sits on a hill in town; it's kind of a tourist
attraction/resting spot for the locals. But again, we were of course
wrong. We went to a different tea house which ended up being very
nice, but as we entered, Emily told us we could be there for lunch and
dinner until 5:00 if we liked. Excuse me? Until 5:00 what are
we going to do here for 5 hours? Go big or go home I guess. We sat
upstairs at two large tables that we pushed together to accommodate the
8 of us and the Vice Directors 3 year old kid. It was a buffet- with
lots of things that were not identifiable, so my first trip included a
banana and an apple just in case I was not prone to eating the other
things. Once the owner of the tea house found out that American
teachers were there, they brought 4 or 5 special dishes¡± that were
not included in the buffet line. Thankfully, oysters were one of these
special dishes, as I was devastated that they were not an option. (for
those of you who don't know me, I don't eat things that swim and
Ang doesn't particularly care for fish either.) In my defense, I ate
some of the oysters, several things that were not identified from the
buffet line, duck (David thinks it was the head, and once I thought
about it, I saw it in the bone structure and figured that I had
probably eaten the brains) and I also ate some of the little bird.
There was a plate of little bird that the owner brought to us. We
assumed it was sparrow or something of that nature, but someone else
claimed that it was dove or pigeon. I think it was too small to be
either of those birds. Anyway, we were at a tea house, so we of course
had a tea demonstration and were able to try the green and oolong teas
once the show was done. Then they asked what kind of tea we'd like,
and we all tried the flower tea- even though we had just had oolong
and green tea. So there we sat, as they kept bringing more and more
food- fruit plates and nuts and lychees- drinking our flower tea. At
this point, it was only 3:30. All of the foreign teachers were stuffed
from all the food we had gotten, but our two Chinese hosts were still
eating and eating. It was amazing since they are both so skinny. The
director did have to take her son home because he had a bathroom
accident while we were there- if only hed had the pee pee pants, he
would have been able to just pee on the floor. So, we sat, and drank
tea, and sat, and drank tea- which was really relaxing- especially
since it was so hot out- but we were not up for eating dinner there
too. It was the same food, and none of us were really that hungry.
So, since the Chinese are not really prone to understanding subtle
hints, we told Emily we'd like to go walking around for a little bit.
We said that she would not have to accompany us because we knew where
we were and we would be able to get back to the school on our own- but
she told us then that the director had told her to protect us so
she came along. We stopped at a book store which was cute- and it had
the new Harry Potter book in English! I didn't buy it because I
haven't read all the other ones after the 2nd or 3rd one, but it was
neat that they had it. David had already purchased it from a different
book store and he'd started reading it. We eventually parted Emily's
company and continued to shop before heading back to the school.
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