Dinner with Dan

I keep wanting to write about my classes, my apartment, and the food that I’ve eaten since I’ve arrived, but I guess I’ll have to put all of that off for a little while longer as the past few days have been really busy. For example, on Thursday we had an important visitor at ShiShi High School.

There I was, sitting at my desk in the office, when all of a sudden I see a familiar face at the door. Dan, the Director of International Partnerships at Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, is in town. I met him two weeks ago when I went to the teacher training at Wasatch Academy. He was wonderful when I visited as he gave me a tour of campus, showed me around town, and introduced me to all of the teachers at Wasatch. He even invited me into his home and I had the chance to meet his wife and children.

Dan travels around the world visiting Wasach’s partner schools. He makes sure that us foreign teachers are teaching to Wasatch’s standards, as well as acts as a recruiter in an attempt to make Wasatch a more global campus. Wasatch is a private boarding school where about 50% of the student body is from outside of the United States. It is a very interesting school. Should there ever be a job opening there, I would be tempted to accept it. Anyway, if you want to know more about the school, check out its website.

Dan asked how I was adjusting to China and how my classes were going. He then sat in on one of my English classes. This normally wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except that it was my first day teaching that particular class, and I hadn’t even met my students yet. So, Dan had the opportunity to meet my students when I did. After class was over, Dan and I met to talk about the classes and my teaching style. Luckily, Dan was impressed with the way I ran my class. This was a very big relief. After all, it was Dan’s faith in me that got me this job. Also, Dan has two masters degrees in education, and taught in a middle school for ten years, meaning, I got the approval of a very experienced teacher. Happy day.

After everyone’s classes were done for the day, all of the foreign teachers met for a meeting with Dan. He went over basic expectations and goals, and encouraged us to “Inspire Excellence” among our students.

Anyways, the best part of Thursday is what we did after the meetings were over. We all got in the company car and headed into town where we went to a very nice restaurant in at the Eastar Hotel. Dan said that Wasatch wanted to treat all of us teachers to a nice dinner before he left. The restaurant is known for its American food selection , however, as it was a buffet, it was more of a mish-mash of food from many different countries.

This is what my plate looked like from round 1. I went down one of the long lines of food filled pots, and somehow ended up with mostly meat. I later found out that all of the other non-meat dishes were on the other side of the room. At the top left of the plate we have an “American style pork chop.” Essentially, it was just really peppery and dry. At the top right we have duck and some sort of mystery meat. Also on the plate is some sort of dumpling, zucchini with shrimp, sweet potato, curry noodles, spicy chicken, and rice. It was all very good.

This is my plate from round 2. I saw that there was corn on the pizza, so I had to try it. Also, turns out the roll on my plate was filled with red bean paste. It tasted delicious.

I also decided to try the seafood soup. It was very sweet as it was in a coconut broth, but once I saw all of the tentacles in it, I put the spoon down and stopped eating.

This photo was my attempt to discreetly take a photo of the table. Even though there were eight people at the table, I somehow only managed to get the crazy British chemistry teacher in the photo.

One of the coolest things about this restaurant was that in the center of the room there were two chefs who could grill anything you wanted right in front of you. I had the option of salmon, tuna, steak, or pork chops. I went with the salmon, and it was fantastic.

This may be a silly photo, but I had to include it. Finding western toilets in China is like winning the lottery two times in a row. I had spent this particular day teaching at ShiShi. I had been told that there were western toilets there, but I couldn’t find any. All I found were the nasty squatty potties. And, being an incredibly stubborn foreigner, I refused to use it. Once we got to the restaurant, I excused myself to go to the restroom, all the while silently praying that I would find a proper toilet. And I did! Thus, we see my excitement over a simple toilet.

The best part of the evening was the hilarious table conversations. Everyone at the table (except me) has traveled the world and had unbelievable stories to share. Dan told us about his experience at the gold market in Dubai. Then one of the other teachers told a story about how the police stole jewels from a Saudi prince in Thailand. Next, Tristan entertained us with tale after tale of ridiculous things he had seen while living in different Haitian communities in Florida. Conversation then turned to turkey (the food, not the country) as Dan told us a story involving rotting turkeys exploding in Kuwait, and another teacher talked about burning through a frozen turkey with thermite.

Then, the topic of discussion turned to bizarre foods we all had eaten. The stories that followed involved durian (the smelly, foul tasting fruit that Andrew Zimmerman from the Travel Channel can’t even swallow), pig/rabbit/goat brains, boiling a sheep whole in Kazakhstan, sheep testicle soup, and pigs blood.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed myself, once dinner was over, I noticed that I had in no way shape or form contributed to the conversation. I simply did not have any crazy story that was worthy enough to share. Perhaps when this adventure of mine is over, I will finally have crazy stories to tell…