Zao shang hao from Chengdu! I was too tired to blog last night, so I got up a little early this morning to post. I thought I'd try to address some questions that have been recurring in my correspondence with people.

First, the food: John, you will be disappointed to know that I still haven't met General Tsao or his chicken, but they do actually have a dish named kung pao chicken and even sweet and sour pork. The similarities kind of end there for the cuisine here and what you'd find in a standard Chinese restaurant at home. It is still hard to describe really what I eat, because I am largely unable to identify it. I'll give a run-through of my daily diet. For breakfast (or chi fan), I have a bowl of hot milk, and as a nod to my Western tastes, white bread with strawberry jam. They also prepare an egg for me, either hard boiled or fried. Breakfast is frequently my favorite meal of the day, just because it tastes different from what I eat for lunch and dinner. I sometimes eat lunch at home, but usually I go out during the week because I am at school all day. A typical lunch consists of whatever I can point at and say "I want that" in a noodle shop. The homemade noodles are excellent, and really fun to watch being made. It has a similar air of the art form that does tossing dough into a pizza crust.

For dinner (chi wan) I eat at home with my host family. The table is set with 4-5 different dishes, and we all have a bowl of rice and chopsticks. We snag from the dishes whatever we want to eat, one bite at a time, and eat it with our rice. Common dishes are a spicy Chinese salad of carrots and some green, slimy root (I really like this and so we have it at every meal), boiled spicy beef with carrots and potatoes (a Chinese version of pot roast), or tofu with greens in a clear broth. They have recently discovered that I really like tofu, so that is appearing on the table often. My host family strives to find out what I like and then provide me with it all the time. It really is sweet and an incredibly endearing characteristic of the Chinese people. For example, on Friday night we had dinner at my host father's friends' house and they gave me a Coke during the meal. The food was spicy, so I drank it gladly (even though it was warm--I thought you'd enjoy that, Anne). The next day my host father went out and bought a case of Coke and now wants me to drink it at every meal. Dessert, usually my favorite component of any meal, is generally watermelon, which is a good palate cleanser and pleasantly cool. I really miss good old American baking, however. Ah well, guess I may as well resign myself, unlesss someone can ship me a pie or something...

Well, as usual, I have rambled on and now it is time for me to be getting ready for school. Chi fan is almost ready, and I leave shortly after that. I will get to my other scheduled topics later. Be well, everyone. Until next time.