"Ignorance is Bliss"

Cooking class today was an eye opener. There is this spicy sauce here at the school. Michael is famous for it, and the girls LOVE it. Everyone loves it. He makes a massive jar of it every monday and it's long gone by Friday. The Chinese teachers, the teachers I'm here with, everyone! People don't eat anything without the spicy sauce. I am trying real hard to be better with the spicy things but it usually doesn't end well if I do. I cry. Big crocodile tears and my face goes bright red! I have those pansy sensitive taste buds I guess. Anyways, Dad would LOVE this sauce. I'm excited to come home and make it for everyone. :) So we were learning to make the sauce, and also an eggplant dish that Michael makes for us quite often and I have never witnessed SOOOO much oil used in one dish before, in my entire life. It made me think of Bekah's story in Costa Rica when they watched their host mom make their meal for them. :) If I remember correctly, it was a similar experience... with excess amounts of butter. Mmmmm. No wonder it's so hard to maintain a figure in foreign countries. I'm just trying to figure out how the asians stay so thin. Beats me. Michael came in carrying a 5 gallon of oil and he used half of it... HALF OF IT on a jar of sauce and a small dish of eggplant. They fry everything in the oil and it absorbs it up so fast. It's unbelievable, but SO delicious. That's the problem :)I'd rather not know what was in what we eat everyday... especially how much of it. Mmmmm mmmmm good.

So a few days ago, Mikelle, Abby and I decided to dread our hair. It's wierd, we didn't use honey so they weren't the real deal, just cop outs. All the same, we did them, and I had planned to leave them in for a good couple of weeks, but I felt so gross and dirty teaching with this hair that I washed them out today. I am usually a quick shower taker... but it took me a good hour all together to get those things out of my hair. Good experience... can't wait for next time.

Topped the night off with a very enjoyable bike ride. Shaila and I rode down to the little man made lake here in Kaiyin and had a nice chat on the dock. It's beautiful. If only the weather stayed right here! Apparantly we can expect warm weather for a little while. Mid 80's tomorrow. Can't complain though, I asked for it.

Two things I'm going to do when I get home...

1) Watch Mulan
2) Climb the tree in our backyard.