Every weekday, I'm expected to have lunch and dinner at school. Lunch is at 11.30 am and dinner is at 5.30 pm. I'll try to explain what the school meals are like.

The meals are served on the top floor of the school building. There are three class rooms (a lot smaller than Dutch class rooms) and each room has a round table in it. On each table, there are five plates with different kinds of food on them, usually one plate with pork or chicken, one with fish and the other three with vegetables. Everything is deep-fried. The meat and fish dishes are spicy, the veggies taste like garlic. Sometimes we have something special, like fish heads (eyes staring at you - ugh!) or pieces of pork blood (yes, B-L-O-O-D).

When you go upstairs for lunch or dinner, the first thing you do is grab a white bowl and two pairs of chopsticks. One pair of chopsticks is for transporting the food from the plates to your bowl (Dutch: opscheplepels) and one pair is for transporting the food from your bowl to your mouth. You fill your bowl with steamed rice and then you sit down at one of the tables on a stool that I think was originally designed for toddlers. Where am I supposed to leave my legs?! The Chinese don't seem to be having a problem with sitting on a mini-stool. In fact, there are a lot of restaurants in Yangshuo with miniature stools instead of proper chairs. But hey, the Chinese are a lot shorter. I'm not tall at all (at least, not in Holland), but I'm not a toddler anymore either!

And then, the feast begins. You eat the veggies, meat and/or fish with the steamed rice and if you like, you can have soup as well. You put the soup in a (rice) bowl, take out the pieces with chopsticks and you drink the liquid (whilst making a lot of noise). I've never tried the soup, because I'm not a big soup-fan and the soup always looks a bit weird. I have no idea what's swimming in it... As mentioned before, the Chinese eat with their mouths open, they smack, burb and make a lot of noise. Yuk! After all these weeks, the students are still surprised that I'm usually the first to leave the table!!!