last night's meal

this keyboard is weird... the shift key is in a weird spot so i'm having problems writing anything quickly.

last night we went out to some new restaurant (by new i mean they served food i'd never had before.) they essentially bring you a bunch of raw food, a heating plate and a big pot full of broth and you do the cooking. we had no clue what we were doing and our questions were just not getting us anywhere with the first waitress. also i discovered (the hard way) that our table had a doorbell that rang throughout the restaurant (i was pretty embarassed when i realized what i'd done and the waitress came running to get our order).

anyway... eventually it seems like she must've gone to get someone who could speak more english and then came the lesson on how to eat this thing properly... we were being watched the entire rest of the meal, being corrected whenever we did anything inappropriate or they wanted to further refine our techniques. i was pretty mortified at the whole situation... how many people might we have offended?? how ignorant did we look??

i then realized that the waiter was just trying to help and he really was just being friendly. he asked us for our names spelled them out and then found out that i spoke french (came with explaining my name) he started speaking his three lines of french 'bonjour, comment allez-vous? je t'aime'. It was funny. He asked us if we'd be back today but alas today we move onto another city.

we keep having these strange exchanges.

actually yesterday during our bike ride we passed by a man who had a flat tire on his car. we were going to keep riding but then i felt guilty so i asked ryan if we could go back and offer a hand so we turned around and went back. the man refused our help but then found us at the next rest stop and came and thanked us for the offer.