"What do you call a white American person with a PhD in physics and math?"*

*You get kudos if you know where the title of this blog entry comes from.  If you don't know, e-mail me and I'll send you the clip.

On Monday Charlie and I took it easy, not having really had a chance to get a proper night's sleep and recover from jet lag thus far.  The only thing we did was venture out for food a couple of times, once alone and once with Tony and Elena.

During our first food-seeking outing, we went the wrong way first, accidentally happening upon the Israeli, U.S., and German embassies.  As I would find out later from a Google map of our neighborhood, there are dozens of embassies nearby, as well as the U.N. building.  As we walked around I notice that Charlie had been right the day before: people do not stare as much here.  It also wasn't bothering me as much because Charlie's father, who has lived in China and Africa on and off for 20 years, gave us a bit of a pep talk about it after reading my previous entries.  He explained that while staring is considered rude in Chinese culture, there is a greater threshold for what constitutes a stare (you can look a little longer before what you are doing is considered to be rude).  He said the best ways to deal with it are to make eye contact briefly or to smile at them, pretty much the same as you would do back home. I have been doing my best to smile at people and I am enjoying myself a lot more because of it.

Once we figured out that we weren't going to the right direction for food (we were looking for a string of restaurants on Lucky Street), we headed back the other way until we found our destination.  Surprisingly, there was only one Chinese food restaurant on the entire street.  The rest were Korean, Japanese, Indian, Thai and one called "Nashville".  We opted for a Korean barbecue, a type of cuisine that neither of us had ever tried. We didn't know what the hell we were doing the entire time.  I figured that this restaurant had had its share of dealing with idiotic foreigners because no picture-taking was allowed.  Fortunately, the waitstaff seemed used to this and were very gracious never to correct anything we did, no matter how many faux-pas were committed. 

Once we were seated, our waiter(s) came over and our table was instantly covered with cups of tea, a plate of three kinds of what we assumed were appetizers, something that tasted like butternut squash soup, several sauces and a large bowl of lettuce.  We pointed at a noodle soup and a "beef combo" on the menu.  One of the waitstaff removed the cover from the grill built into the center of our table, turned it on and disappeared.  After a while, they brought the noodle soup and we started eating it.  Moments later, a waiter came out with the beef combo, showed it to us, and then set it on the little waiter station near our table. We thought maybe he did this because there wasn't enough room on the table, so we cleared a spot and brought the platter over.  I put Charlie in charge of the grilling, as this is his forté.  As soon as the meat could be heard sizzling, two of the waitstaff rushed over to take over for us.  Charlie apologized in Chinese.

As the meat was cooked and served onto our plates, occasionally along with onions, Charlie and I discussed whether we were supposed to use the lettuce to wrap it up.  I finally dared him to do it so he checked with the waitress, who indicated that yes, that was what we were supposed to do.  We had already eaten about half of the meat by itself at this point.  Our final hunk of meat came wrapped around a large rib bone, which was also grilled after the meat was done.  However, instead of being served to us, the waitress just left it on the grill and walked away.  Charlie finally decided to eat it, and after taking one bite, dropped it on the floor.  I laughed, thinking there was no way this meal could get any sillier, and Charlie tried to swiftly pick the bone up off of the floor without anyone noticing.  Unfortunately, the head waiter walked by just in time to witness it.  Shortly thereafter we asked for our bill and got the hell out of there, chuckling all the way home.

Later when Tony and Elena got home from work, we walked to a restaurant a short distance away for Sichuan food.  So far I think Sichuan is my favorite type of Chinese cuisine.  The restaurant was really interesting, quite literally a hole in the wall, which led into a catacomb of twists and turns that passed by a kitchen and two eating areas. 

 We ventured into the first and Tony ordered for us.  We had chrysanthemum tea, a non-alcoholic beer brewed in Beijing, a wonderful dish consisting of chicken and peanuts, an eggplant dish, a typical Sichuan dish of fried pieces of chicken drowning in a pile of hot chilis, and a plate of green vegetable shoots and lotus leaves.  All of it was fantastic.

Not to brag or anything, but this is pretty much the best way to spend a Monday, just so you know.