During Week 20 the pickle was about the size of a hollow, chocolate bunny nestled in a bed of shredded, green plastic grass and accompanied by hatchlings made of industrial mallow-goo and pastel sugar. Oh, pardon me, no. Excuse me. The pickle was in the 20th week of development for the Easter Holiday, and was roughly "five and two thirds to six and one half inches (14 to 16cm)" from crown to rump, according to Glade B. Curtis,M.D., M.P.H and Judith Schuler, M.S. the authors of Your Pregnancy, Week by Week. Man, they're getting more and more precise as the weeks go by, eh?
Yeah, Kasha and I went to Yang Shuo, in the Guilin province with our friend, Leslie to celebrate Easter. There were no jelly beans, no marshmallow peeps, and no chocolate. Notice I did not say no Bunnies. Look, you name it, we could've ate that!
Imagine those fancy, fresh-catch joints you always see on the TV. Classical music wafts over the air while sophisticated diners eat buttered bread with the correct fork while your waiter motions toward the aquarium and asks sir and madame how many pounds will your lobster be tonight?
Our experience was actually more like guys in stained shirts tried to block our progress as we scooted past sidewalk cafes with a collection of live critters trapped in kiddie pools. The point is, you could pick the individual you wanted to dine on. It wasn't lobster, niether. That would've been too predictable!
We had the choice to eat fresh (read: squirming) turtle, snake, rat, weasel, chicken, duck, all manner of fish- eel- crab- snail, and yes... The Easter Bunny hisself! Yummy!
You can imagine the smell. Is that lemon-herb butter or did somebody go in their pants?
We went with a stew of tomato, beer and fresh water fish of questionable species and origin... but certainly very big and with just enough 'fight' left in him. Washed those down with sour-hot snails in a soup that contained the very first taste of lemon grass I've come across in Chinese cuisine since arriving here. I'm just saying.
It was a great place full of fun sights and interesting people from all corners of the globe. A bit rainy, but what do you want? It was nice enough for us to go on a five-miles bike ride punctuated with river rafting on traditional bamboo rafts. We learned that the characteristic 'round' mountains of this part of China (and to a lesser degree, Vietnam) were once deep unda da sea. "500 Million years ago," said our bike-guide. The rocks were washed smooth and round and eventually massive, prehistoric seismic activity drastically altered the topography of the area and produced a unique source of pride for the Chinese.
I'm searching, really reaching here, but it's sort of like the pickle's original fingertips forming in the 20th week. These features are genetically predetermined at the moment of conception but it is only in week 20 that the skin develops into the dermal and epidermal layers allowing the "fingerprints" and such to take shape. See? That wasn't so bad, a little history, a little biology, some food and religion. Reminds me of UuhD High!
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