nice little Sunday afternoon

Yesterday I went to my coffee shop after work to write, and as I was sitting down an older Chinese woman came up to me and introduced herself in very good English. She sat down with me to chat for a bit. The area right in front of the coffee shop is a sort of transportation hub for buses (like five routes begin there), and she had been waiting for a bus when she saw me walk by and decided to follow me in to talk to me.

She asked me if I had plans for the afternoon, and being that I just had very loose plans to grab dinner and drinks a few hours down the road with some of the other foreigners, I said not really. She asked if I would mind if her college aged niece, who is studying English translation, came to join us and chat with me. I said of course not, so she called her niece, who invited us over to her home instead.

We walked over to her sister's apartment where her niece stays, and her niece and I ate and drank tea and talked for a few hours. Her sister came home, and then her sister's husband came home and the three of the older adults cooked dinner. No one actually asked me to stay for dinner, they just assumed I would.

The meal was phenomenal, we had a few different kinds of fish, pork, goose, leeks and eggs, some kind of salad, homemade sangria aaaaaand (drumroll please) crocodile! I tried it and the woman's niece freaked out, she had never tried before either, even though her parents make it often enough (needless to say I talked her into it). It was crocodile "hands." The skin was still on, it had a thick layer of fat underneath it. It was pretty tasty, not a lot of meat, but the fat didn't have that icky, fatty, squishy texture.

After dinner, the niece invited me to try on traditional Chinese costumes that her mother had, so the four of us women basically played dress up and had a photo shoot for a few hours while we forced the woman's poor brother in law to take pictures. It was so random and awesome.

I was there for almost six hours and completely missed my friends. They were calling/texting the whole time, but I felt rude answering and honestly, there was no way I was leaving that scenario for anything. I can't make this stuff up!