Lunch

Caution: this blog post has no photos. Sorry, but one white woman and six Chinese children in this land of the one child policy are conspicuous enough without taking photos in places where no one would ever think to take photos.
Food is not really my favorite thing to blog about because mostly there is nothing here that I like. It is certainly one of the toughest things for me. Every now and then we hop the #4 bus and go downtown to McDonald's and that is my best meal for awhile.
When we were in Zhengzhou in December some new friends took us to a buffet restaurant that has pseudo-American food. It is called OrigUS, which I gather stands for Original US. Not sure what's original about it, but that's probably not the point. They have pizza, pasta, chicken, fish, soup, well, a very, very wide variety of kind of American dishes along with some Chinese and sushi. All you can eat. Imagine my surprise when these same friends visited us over spring festival and spotted an OrigUS right here in Jiaozuo! It's right where we get off the bus to go to McDonald's.
So today I took the kids and we ventured out to OrigUS. Overall, I would have to say it was a success. As usual, there were only a few things that I liked, but a few things is way better than nothing, so it's definitely some place I can find something to eat. (The pasta was good, the chicken wings were excellent, the pizza was so-so and the fries were great.) Everyone found enough to eat, so that is a thumbs up as well. It costs more than McDonald's (270RMB for 7 of us which is about $40) but, um, yes, we more than got our money's worth.
At first Lucy and Crystal were a little confused, they had never been to a buffet like this before, at least as far as I could tell. (Hard to tell whether Peter had or not, he's 14 and too cool to let on.) I took the girls around the buffet showing them all the food, where to get the plates and letting them know they could have whatever they wanted. I turned to help Kristen and when I looked back both Lucy and Crystal had plates of cake. Hmm. I took those to the table and told them they had to get real food first. Then I noticed they were overflowing their plates, so I let them know they could eat and come back for more. HUGE GRINS. And they did. Go back and back and back again. They were giddy with the wonder of it.
One fun moment was showing Crystal how to use the drink machine. You know, you hold your glass and push it against the stem to make the drink dispense. Evidently she had never done that before. She enjoyed it very much. ;) And then the ice cream machine...picture three kids yelling stop at the soft serve as it is sliding into the bowl. Luckily Marissa was nearby and showed them how to turn it off.
So no photos, but we took home some really cool memories and very full tummies.