McDonalds in our neighborhood

We now have a McDonald's Restaurant about a mile from our house. It was so crowded the first few weekends it was open that the wait was over an hour. Despite requests from the boys, we waited to try it. Also, the parking lot only has about 15 spots, which means that it's a treachorous adventure. You have to dodge cars, backing in and out of random pockets of space. The street outside the place is jammed with cars at busy times.

Yesterday evening, I asked the boys if they'd like to have McDonald's for dinner. Of course, they said yes. So, I left them at home with the Ayi and drove to the small parking lot and found a spot since it was not even 5:00 yet. The first thing I noticed was a group of 8 teen-aged Western boys sitting at counter, eating and "hanging out." Everyone else in the place was Chinese. Right outside the door was a black sedan, waiting for the boys, driver asleep behind the wheel. Not something you'd see in the burbs back home too often.

I began to place our order, using Chinese, but quickly realized that I must have missed the McDonald's menu lesson in my Chinese class. So, the cashier pulled out the "stupid westerner menu with pictures". I pointed and said how many of each thing. I would have been ok had Huck not asked for ice cream. I pointed to the item that looked like ice cream. It was white and in a cup and looked like a scoop of soft ice cream. I said I wanted one and she asked me something I could not understand, at all. So, I pointed again and tried to say I wanted it in a cup, not a cone, so she asked me something again and her sidekick said something to her and they decided they had their answer. I felt satisfied until the began to set the order in front of me and it turned out what I'd ordered was an iced coffee drink of some sort, with whipped cream on top. Scary thing is that it was modified in some way since they knew I didn't want something that usually came with it.

Oh well. It turns out there is a back side to the menu and on it is a lovely picture of an ice cream cone. SO I placed another order for the ice cream, which Huck later took one bite of and said it was too cold!

While I waited for the whole order to be put together, I observed my surroundings and saw 3 workers at the chicken nugget station having a conversation and looking closely at a particular nugget. After about a minute, the group dispersed and the last remaining man popped the offending nugget in his mouth and went back to work.