My favorite part of travel???? — Checking out the local cuisine.  By and large, I enjoy a wide range of foods, and I’m generally willing to try about anything, but some things just don’t sit well with me.  Japan excels in putting together combinations that simply should not be tried by anyone, ever…

Still, there’s only one thing I’ve ever heard of that I will positively, absolutely NOT EVEN TRY: “Three Squeals.”

…the most exotic Guangxi dish is called Chia San Jiao, literally ‘Eat Three Squeals’. It consists of live rat embryos laid out on a plate. The dish’s name is said to have originated from the fact that the animal squeals once when picked up with chopsticks, a second time when dipped in the accompanying sauce and a third (and last) time when it is popped into the mouth.

Great image…

Starbucks, like McDonalds before it, has truly gone international. While it’s absolutely fantastic that one can get one’s crack caffeine fix abroad (and the jury is out as to whether swaying tea-sipping cultures towards coffee is a good or bad thing), it does present some problems for the language student as “caramel macchiatto” is not commonly found in most dictionaries (yet). It can make ordering a bit of a conundrum when outside of the major European languages (ordering in France, Germany, or Spain should be fairly easy, given that they, like us, crib the Italian terms — and, hey, latte is French ). Towards the goal of facilitation of getting that caffeine fix, I offer the following list of terms in Chinese (please feel free to add other languages in the comments box):

note: first transcription is roma pinyin, the second is my best attempt at spelling it out for those who have no knowledge of Chinese.

macchiatto: [ma qi duo] [mah chee dw-o(r) (as in the vowel sound in “bore”)]

latte: [na tie] [nah tee ay]

mocha: [mo ka] [mo(r) kah]

coffee: [ka fei] [kah fay]

chocolate: [qiao ke li] [chow kuh lee]

white chocolate: [bai se qiao ke li] [buy si(r) chow kuh lee]

hot: [re de] [ri(bbet) duh]

iced: [bing de] [bing duh]

frappucchino: [bing sha] [bing sah]

Drink up!