A local restaurant

The most interesting experience so far was dinner tonight.  We are in a nice hotel in a very commercial part of the city, so you may figure that the Chinese restaurant across the street would have some out of town visitors occasionally.  I think their total preparation for us consisted of having one menu in English.  While we could read the names for things and see prices, we would come to find out that we had no concept of the "heat" (spiciness) or quantity of the food.  We have 10 in our group right now so we had a big group at dinner.  After ordering one family at a time (which was an experience in itself because I think we went through at least two waitresses that each knew very little English), the dishes started coming, and coming, and coming.  Our whole table was covered in food after a while, and we were sure there was no way we could have meant to order this much.  In the end, we found out that Beef with Peppers means "hot" peppers and not green bell peppers, that a single order of soup can feed the whole restaurant, and that you don't say "that's beautiful" about the artwork they parade in front of you to buy, because that only means despite your intent to not buy it, they will show you about 4 others equally as nice.  Keep in mind that only about two employees of the whole restaurant know any English at all.

In the end, it was an unforgettable experience, and one I know that we will look back on and laugh.  That is if the next several hours our stomachs don't rebel on us from all of the peppers we ate.