Hey Kev look what Gou's Dad is about to eat!

Michelle and I both have off work Mondays and Tuesdays, so those are our 2 days to do some exploring, even though Ill only be working less than 20hrs/week. Today we got up late, and once showered we decided to take the scooter and go have lunch at one of her favorite places, Milton's Coffee. Milton is a Chinese man who lived in NYC for a while and recently moved back to Guilin to open this restaurant/coffee shop. Its a pretty small place with just a few tables, nice and cozy. Michelle ordered the vegetable soup of the day and I had a small ham and vegetable pizza, both were delicious! Thanks Milton! I also wanted to try some tea, since I am in China you know, so I got the Rose and Herb Tea which was also very good and the aroma was fantastic! After this nice lunch I wanted to go explore the city since today it wasnt raining, thank God. We 'scooter-ed' around to different spots taking pictures and sightseeing, getting better acquainted with Guilin. We went over by the two famous pagodas in front of a lake and got our picture taken with a bunch of Chinese tourists, seen some fish swimming in the lake as well which was cool. I need to go buy a fishing pole one of these days and catch some of those bastards and fry em up in the wok. The next place we went to was this little smoothie and juice shop that Michelle said makes the best mango milkshakes for less than 1 dollar, and I now agree, they are sooo good. There are soo many little shops and street vendors all over the city selling their specialty foods, anything from nuts, to fruits, to chicken on a stick, and all the weird ass shit like animal organs and other body parts that I wont get into, just imagine.

I think Im getting used to this crazy driving method one has to practice when driving a vehicle in China, just go and dont look back! Michelle is still scared riding with me but I tried letting her drive and it was boring! haha. People blow their horn to let you know they are passing you and they even drive on the wrong side of the street if they want, it really is insanity. I dont know how it works so well with no accidents, but it does. Before heading back home we stopped by the grocery store to get some food and shit, you should see all the weird shit they sell in there, fuck. We had to get back to the apt to wait for Gou, Michelle's boyfriend, to get off work because we are going to have dinner at his parents house.

One of the girls that works at the school with us is having some couch surfers stay with her for a couple days and we are aware of this because we got the requests as well. Couch surfing, if you dont know, is a cool website that people set up profiles on and host travelers from around the world when they come to your city. Tons of people do it in China, as well as all over the world. Its really popular and seems to be catching on more and more. There is about 10 of us here in Guilin that have profiles and host, I havent hosted because I dont have my own apt yet. Michelle has hosted a bunch of travelers and says its the most fun she has in China. So anyway, once we got back to the apt to wait for Gou Michelle ran into the two girls outside our apt complex. Turns out they cant get in touch with this girl and dont know what to do , so of course we invite them up and let them hang out while we go eat at Gou's. They are cool and are from Jerusalem, but have been living in Cali and then NYC for the last 5 years. We tell them as long as they dont mind looking after Michelles dog they can stay until we get back or whatever. Michelle tells me stories about this girl from work and how weird and stupid she is all the time and its just like her to leave people hanging like this she says and she doesnt belong on Couchsurfing.com. We figure we will just let them stay with us since we will be off work till Wednesday afternoon if this chick doesnt contact them.

After the 1.50 dollar taxi ride we arrive at Gou's parents apt complex, knock on the door, and his parents invite us inside. They dont speak any English, so we just smile and laugh at one another, its pretty cute. Michelle can speak a little to them, but Gou mostly translates for us. They are really sweet people and make a cute couple. Tonight we are making jiaozi, which are Chinese traditional dumplings stuffed with meat and vegetables. They are pretty hard to make but Gou's Mom makes it look easy, I suck at it. She likes making them for foreigners because she knows everyone loves them. They also made all kinds of other traditional Chinese dishes, including the original pizza dough recipe that Marco Polo took from China and brought to Italy, creating the pizza we know today. This was pretty cool for me, and it was delicious. It doesnt have cheese or sauce, just the bottom crust part of it. She had two kinds, one had green onion and salt in the dough and the other was sweeter with crushed up black sesame seeds and osmanthus flower, which are found all over Guilin. We finished making the 100 or so jiaozi dumplings she wanted to make and set the table so Gou's Dad could start bringing out all the other food. They seriously cooked soo much damn food it was a little ridiculous. We all could have gotten completely stuffed from the jiaozi alone, but in China they have to make more food then the table can finish to show that they have enough to eat and food is plentiful at their house. Some of the other dishes were; egg and tomatoes, cooked cucumbers and fungi, chicken with mushrooms, chicken with tofu, some cooked spinach looking vegetable, and a different kind of chicken soup. Let me explain a little about how they cook and eat chicken. First of all they buy a whole chicken and just chop it up into pieces, bones and all, including the feet, head, and internal organs. They take the head and the organs and some of the bigger body parts to make the soup and use the smaller stuff and the feet to make the other two chicken dishes I mentioned. So when you eat the chicken you have to be aware of the bones and just spit them out, either directly on the table or in a little bowl they provided for me. I didnt ask to try the soup and they didnt offer it because I think they know westerners dont want to see the head and organs floating around their bowl of soup. I also stayed away from the chicken feet, this time. I did have a pretty nice size pile of bones when I was finished though and I think I ate like 25 dumplings because his Mom kept passing me the bowl and I couldnt turn her down. I sware to God I had to tell Gou to tell her to stop because I was soo f-in full and about to explode, she just laughed and passed a different bowl of food to me. 'Son of a bitch,' I mumbled to laughing Michelle. So when I finally managed to stop the onslaught of food coming my way we still had a table full of food. About that time Michelle abruptly stopped laughing and said pretty loudly, because Gou's parents cant understand us, "Kevin look what Gou's Dad is about to eat!!" When I glanced over I could barely believe my eyes, he had a whole chickens head and neck in the grasp of his chopsticks coming out of the soup. I stared intently as he put this chicken face in his mouth and bit off the whole head, leaving just the neck. I dont know if you ever had the feeling of hurling all over the place and wanting to bust out laughing at the same time, but thats what I felt as I turned to Michelle and asked her to pass the chicken feet. She ignored me and started talking to Gou because she refused to watch this man eat a fuckin chicken head! With the head in his mouth you hear him sucking out the insides and shit and then he leans over and spits out the skull into a bowl. Then with a second mouthful he finished the neck and whatever else came with it. Wholly fuck! This was honestly one of the moments in my life Ill never forget, with the little red floppy looking thing on the top of the chickens head wiggling around and shit. That was some f-ed up shit for real. Michelle almost died I think cuz she was like blue and shit. This was definitely the end of my dinner because there wasnt anything making it down my throat after witnessing that! We sat around practicing our foreign language skills laughing at one another for about 20 minutes before we got up, said our goodbyes, and left with this little Chinese lady still trying to give me more food as we are going down the stairs. Gou said something to her in Chinese that must have sounded like, "Dammit Mom they dont want anymore fuckin food, they are full as shit leave them the hell alone already", because I guess she got the point, said goodbye again, and went back up stairs.

With another 1.50 we get back to the apt and visit with the two girls from Israel who are still chillin. Michelle finally got in touch with the crazy girl so they would have a bed to sleep on instead of the floor or Michelles couch. We showed them where the girls apt was and told them good luck with her, and if they needed anything we were upstairs. We planned that tomorrow we would meet up for some breakfast and then go around and do some more exploring together since I still havent seen all of Guilin.

As I sit here, drinking one of these weak ass Chinese beers, I cant help thinking about Michelle saying to me, as my stomach starts turning again, "Hey Kev look what Gou's Dad is about the eat!" Wow what an experience.