you never go hungery...that's for sure

I did in fact accompany the visitng retired KU prof and his wife around this morning and in the afternoon the took us out to a rather fancy meal. it was my first time expierencing what is probably a formal meal.

it was very interesting and i have to admit i was a bit nervous at first. you can't just walk up to the table and sit wherever you want. where you sit at the table depends on your status as a guest.
there is one "head seat" where on of the officals from the school sat and i believe, i may be wrong on this, but i think whoever is going to pay the bill sits with their back towards the door. i heard that they will do that and sure enough the man who sat in that seat did pay.
on either side of the head seat were the seats for guest 1 and guest 2, which was Professor Margolis and his wife. i was shown towards my proper seat as guest 3. all an all there were 10 of us at the meal. What was also interesting was that the man who drove the van we travelled in also ate with us. They told me it is was an old tradtion that a driver always is invited to the meal. The food was of course incredible! and there was sooooo much of it. they constantly offer you more food and have more dishes brought out. all the food is put on a "lazy susan" and you just spin it around during the duration of the meal. I also got to try two things VERY new to me. Sea cucumber and jellyfish. I'm glad i'm not the kind of person who gets squimish about trying new foods. I had a wonderful dark beer with my meal....and then never let me actually finish a glass before refilling it. I also had very delicious pear juice. And throughout the meal everyone basically takes a turn making a toast.

At one point they got on the subject of what women make the best wives. they claim it is a chinese or japanese woman because they make the best meals. And everytime they would make a comment about these women being better then all other women one of the men would then turn to me and compliment me on what a beautiful lady I am. They talked business for most of the meal so i basically just sat their quietly eating to my heart's content. At the end of the meal they gave small gifts to Prof Margolis and his wife, who happens to be Chinese.
They also gave me and another teacher who was invited, Dale, small gifts as well. I recieved a paded cup, kind of like a cup for pens that is red with gold flowers and dragons on it. It will be a nice reminder of the lunch.

I enjoyed walking around with Prof margolis and his wife..it was kind of like getting the VIP tour. we even got to go into some labs where some kind of cancer research is going on. and it was nice to go into some of the buildings i had not ventured into. At one point we went to a room that was basically filled with the history of Yantai University, and before we left they had prof margolis write in a large guestbook. They were both very very nice people and rather interesting to talk to. They actually knew where chambersburg was! hahahaha they had a grand daughter go to wilson and they often visited her.
they other funny thing was, the girl who was acting as their guide went to Kutztown for a semester and was actually at my graduation sitting in the stands. it's a small world.