Date with Tonsie

"Where's the comment card?"


"Hello?! NI HAO! ...(I'm hungry!)"

Tonya and I went to dinner tonight. We went to one of my students' family owned and run Japanese restaurants. It has really great food...I've had it before. Only, this time Tonya and I went...with no other Chinese speakers...and no one to order for us. There was no buffet this time either!

We walked in, and the lady asked us in Chinese "how many?" So, Tonya held up two fingers. Her two fingers split pretty wide...and if you hold up your thumb and your pinky, that means 6 in China. Tonya's pointer and middle finger looked kind of like that! We're pretty sure the lady thought more were coming. She put us way back in the back of the restaurant in our own private room. We had to take off our shoes and sit on the floor...on pillows. Totally Japenese style. (pictures coming soon)After escorting us to our room, she gave us the menus and poured our tea. Then she quietly exited the room.

After about 30 minutes of waiting for someone to come back to take our order, we opened the sliding doors and looked out to the guys making sushi. There were waitresses and cooks all over the place. Some of them looked at us--several times! We even shouted "Ni hao", meaning 'hello', which is used to get a person's attention here. Nothing! Nobody acknowledged us or came over to attempt to take our order.

Finally, dad walks by (the student's dad), and says "Ni hao!" He asks if it is only two of us, and I said, "dui", which means correct. So a waitress comes in and clears the other dishes from the table. ...And LEAVES! We waited another 10 minutes before I told Tonya to go up to the sushi bar with the menu and tell them our order. I would've done it myself, but I had knee high boots to put back on...and she had slip-ons. It only made sense! (haha). So I snapped pictures while she and I laughed at this obvious cultural faux pas. We had no clue what to do (Do we stay and wait some more? Do we flag down someone again? Do we put our shoes on and walk up to the bar and order?), who to talk to, or how to talk to them. We compared our service to America and were cracking up. Tonya was like, "Where's the comment card?"

I was cracking up...Tonya was practicing every Chinese word she knew...which just perpetuated the ridiculous laughter coming from our room. Maybe that's why they escorted us to our own room?...They knew we'd be loud. Every time someone walked by without acknowledging us, I began to grunt/ growl. That made Tonya laugh. It was hilarious...meanwhile...our tummies were empty.

FINALLY, someone came to take our order. It took awhile to see our food. Tonya ordered spicy chicken and rice with miso soup...I ordered some kind of beef and potato dish, that was supposed to come with rice, but it did not. In addition to ordering from the food menu, Tonya decided to be brave and order a "smoothie" that was on the "special drinks" menu.

The smoothie came first. She smelled it before taking a sip, and thought it smelled like it had alcohol in it. So she sipped, and then put it aside. It ended up being a whole lot of yogurt and apple. Apple does kind of have a weird after taste...a bit like something fermented.

The food then arrived...a bit to our surprise, it looked different than on the menu. Just smelling Tonya's food made my nose start to run. Wowza! Lots of "la jiao"(or red chili's)! Mine came out as a heap of potatoes that had been boiled. It looked like beef stew...no rice...4 sliced carrots and shredded beef. Mine tasted really good. We ate our meals...kind of (Tonya couldn't finish hers...it was too spicy).

When it came time to ask for the "mai dan" we had no clue what to do. At this point though, we had embarassed ourselves and I'm sure we had made several waitresses feel uncomfortable. In China, they get embarassed for you. We decided that because we had parent teacher conferences in the morning, it'd be best to just get up and leave. We had spent at least 2 hours at the restaurant! CRAZY! I passed dad on the way out, and he said, "zai jian!" We paid at the counter on our way out (way to be observant on the way in!).

Oh the fun of being in a new culture where embarassing yourself is just a part of everyday life! :-D