J’ai peur des animaux morts.

Tonight I had my first “foreign” food experience. We definitely had an entire fish—head included—on the dinner table tonight. At first the head was upside down so you couldn’t see the eye socket or the mouth so it wasn’t so bad, and I just told myself ok I can handle this… I like fish, there could be scarier things on the table. And the head part was a separate piece from the body, so when we served ourselves I just took some off the body.

But then when my host mother was taking seconds she turned to head around to get more meat and there it was… the entire fish face staring right at me. It was just too much. I couldn’t look at it without getting massive shivers. I kept hoping she would turn it over, which she finally did but only after 15 minutes of me squeamishly avoiding eye contact with the dead thing I was eating.

The fish was still good, and it could have been worse I guess. One girl here said she came home to see her host father plucking a wild bird on the table, and another girl said someone came home with a leg of deer, skin and hoof still on. Apparently they like to hunt.

I’ve had one other scary animal experience. The other night a woman came on the metro wearing an entire animal around her neck. As soon as I saw the four feet hanging from the fur shawl, I almost threw up and had a heart attack. I had to look at the metro floor for the rest of the ride home. I don’t even want to know if it had a head too.