Out to dinner:

I had originally promised to make my hosts a 'traditional american dinner' one night while i was there as a way to say thank you. then i realized a) i cant cook b) american food isnt that great anyway, nor do i really know what i would consider typical american food and c) chinese people like chinese food (i consulted many people on this) so i dont think they would like it anyway. So instead i opted to take them out to dinner:
Here are my lovely hosts (they really were fantastic, we had tons of fun learning chinese/english together and lots of great meals and laughs!)

Your plate/bowl/spoon/cups and of course chop sticks! all come plastic wrapped....ooooh!

This is us investigating the menu. It took them a long time to decide what to get and i made the mistake of telling them to choose whatever were their favorite dishes and that i would try whatever they liked best. Well, luckily, they don't like too much of the wierd stuff, plus they said it was too expensive. Normally in this situation I would say, "Oh, it's my treat! Lets splurge!" but this time I thought better of it and kept my mouth shut. Some of my favorite menu items were (I wrote these down, this was the translation in the menu:)
- marinated ox stomach
- duck head and lung slices
- small cage of rice flour and pig (for this one i envisioned a big cage, with an actual pig in it and some rice scattered around it)

But everything turned out ok. the food was delicious and the only thing i wasn't so sure of was a soup and when i asked what it was the closest translation i could get was something that can only be described as chicken ankle. oh well.

I'm an idiot and i closed my eyes in this picture: