And the list keeps growing
I have confidence that the culture will eventually stop spinning or at least slow down enough that it will no longer be a blur, but I woke up today with an overwhelming sense of traveler's vertigo. We head out on a tour of the facilities with Angel and the head of the Foreign Affairs office, Victor. We also wander through the neigbourhood and go to the university campus. To cap off the day we join together for a meal.

I have always thought of my self as a regular Joe – if that is true in Canada it is doubly true in China. The food that I know and love is that of the Lao Bai Xing or 'common folk' (literally 'Old Hundred Names'). As we dive into the 'welcome meal' we eat everything with legs except the table!!

I have spent a good part of my life avoiding organ meat – and as a kid growing up in an Aboriginal community that is no easy feat. Speaking of feet…we ate chicken feet and pig feet and...Long story short (as Brian likes to say) we ate every part of the pig but the oink – and I am not sure if I didn't taste a little oink in one of the sauces.

Within 12 days of entering China we have eaten: dog, frog (both Chinese and American), donkey, talons, hoofs, duck bill & tongue, several chickens and ducks, both as "whole in the bowl' soup and as the separated bits such as artery, liver, gizzard, bowels, heart, lung, and then there was the stuff we were too scared to ask ' zheige shi shenme?" (What is this?)