Talking about food is always interesting in a multi-cultural environment. In fact, the only thing we all seemed to agree on today in class was that eating babies is bad (it was a strange, strange, twisted road that got us to that conclusion). One student would say that eating dog is strange, another would reply that dog is delicious...same for horse, cat, rat, and even scorpion. It was an interesting conversation indeed, and as a teacher in a multi-cultural environment, you learn to keep your initial reactions to cultural things under wraps...
"Oh, you eat dog? Interesting..."
"You had donkey? What did it taste like? It tasted like horse? Yeah, that doesn't really help me..."
"Your military eats scorpians in the desert? Doesn't the venom make them sick?"
"Eating live frogs? Wouldn't they jump around in your stomach?"
Yes, all of these sentences actually came out of my mouth today...
As a person with an incredibly strong gag reflex, I have a hard time stomaching these kinds of conversations without letting my true feelings (and possibly my lunch) out. So, why do I do it? It's interesting (in theory), the students are almost always engaged, and our current textbook has a reading on bug eating...okay, so mostly it was the last reason. :)
Want to know more about bug eating? Check out this article I had my students read tonight for extra credit.
And remember, everyone agrees that eating babies is bad...
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