Saturday, September 11, 2010
CommuniTEE College. Part 2
Day two at MCC was on Friday the 10th, and it started out nicely, taking only about 20 minutes to get to the school, rather then the 40 minutes it took two days before. We just went by a different route then the one we took on Wednesday, and drove practically all the way around the city, instead of through it.

English is my first class, we have maybe 22 people, and a nice, fairly young teacher. It was the 2nd class, so we didn't really end up doing any learning, except for about each other. The teacher gave us a few questions to ask the person next to us, it was an interview of sorts. The questions were simple things like your name, where you live, what you're interested in studying, and the weirdest thing you ever ate. My partner was, strangely enough, a lady who has recently started going to my church. For those of you who don't know, I don't have a very large church, it's small enough that I know everyone by name, but I didn't know this lady's name, I knew her kids and husband's names, because the kids had come to a childrens program we do at our church, but I'd only talked to her once, and hadn't had a chance to ask her name. But we recognized each other before class, and talked a bit, so we sat next to each other and ended up interviewing each other. Heather is from Dracut, she is coming back to school to become an RN, and the weirdest food she ever ate was pigs feet, and she likes them. I am Anastasia, I'm also from Dracut, I want to transfer to a different college come fall and go for Special Education, and the weirdest I ate was gefilte fish at a Jewish Passover meal, and I thought it was disgusting. Another girl in the class quickly stated that she was Jewish, and it is an acquired taste, but I think no matter how many times I ate it, I would still be grossed out.
Some of the weirdest things people had ever eaten included ostrich, pond water, and snake.
There were a few other weird foods worth mentioning. One guy who was originally from the Dominican Republic was talking about a soup, I can't remember the name, but the main ingredient was cow intestines, and another guy in the room was quick to mention "That stuff smells NASTY!" Someone said they had heard of something similar, but it had sheep intestines instead, The guy who had the soup asked "Wouldn't sheep intestines be considered haggis?" and our teacher was quick to say "No, haggis is from a lamb." Which is a rather absurd thing to say, and if you don't understand why, please, try not to be so dumb.
One kid recently came from an Asian country, and sadly I didn't heard which because some people were talking, but he said the weirdest food he ever ate was ghosts. Everyone kind of looked around the room at each other with a "What?!" sort of face, until another guy said "Do you mean...goat?" And yes, he did. He said it tasted like chicken and was very yummy.

Our group is very diverse, which I like, and everyone seems to be getting along very well so far, yet there is one kid who sort of stands out. For this kids sake I am going to call him Trevor, that's not his name, but it might as well be. Now Trevor really confused me the first time I saw him, I figured that he either grew up in the boonies of West Virginia, or was homeschooled. He didn't have an accent, so I don't think he's from down south, and the homeschool thing I'm still not sure about. We were going around the room, doing our interviews, and we finally got around to Trevor's partner. "This is Trevor, he's from Lowell, and the weirdest thing he's ever eaten is dog..." At this point I could see a lot of jaws dangling open, the teacher included, but she recovered and replied with "Dog? Where did you have that?" And here we all are thinking it was in some third world country or something, and he just replies "In Centerville." Everyone's jaws hit the table. The teacher, flabbergasted asked, "Is that, is that like...a restaurant or something??" To which Trevor says, "No, Centerville in Lowell. My friends friend made it into soup, and I had some."
The whole class was in shock, I kind of wanted to laugh, but I tried not to. My teacher just sort of stared for a minute and then said "Well, I'm not roasting my pug, next group please!"
An artist rendition of Trevor, apparently he is close cousins to Edward Scissorhands.
(Click to enlarge for more Trevor goodness!)

I'm all for eating meat, I have no problem with eating venison, or moose, or bear or anything like that, but this was just bizarre and freakish. Why would you admit to eating dog? Why would you even eat dog if you knew that's what it was?!!? I'm pretty positive I wouldn't, unless I was about to die of starvation.

Lowell is full of strange people, and community college pulls out a strange selection of those strange people. But I'm not complaining, I enjoy it, and I got a really good laugh out of this strange kid.
added by Anonymous @ 5:06 PM
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