因为在神没有一件事是不可能的

I throw away food.

Let me rephrase that.

I throw away a lot of food.

(I know over 800 million people will go to bed hungry tonight because they couldn't afford one meal today. If I could give them my food I would. But I can't.)

Maybe being from an extremely obese country has made me think this way, but if you're full stop eating!

Most of the time I buy my own food. It's my food and like anything else I own I can choose to do whatever I want with it.

If I buy a pen that I don't end up using I don't have a second thought about throwing it away. If I buy something that doesn't work properly it ends up in the trash.

If I have food that tastes bad I don't eat it.

If someone else buys, or I'm at someone's house, I'll eat as much as I possibly can. I'm not rude, I'm just not a glutton.

However, when the school I work for begins placing guards by the tray depository to make sure everyone is finishing everything they are given I get a little pissed.

Especially when half the lunches they serve deserve to be thrown away before they reach any creature's mouth.

I understand their logic. They want to make everyone eat everything.

After forcing kids (and apparently teachers also) to stuff themselves silly for a couple day they think that the over stuffed people will learn to take less.

If everyone takes less food the school saves money.

In theory.

But I don't think it will work.

This is obviously an idea cooked up by the administration.

These people never talk to the students.

Student's study all morning. By the end of the 4th period there isn't a student that isn't complaining about being hungry.

Most of them always have and always will take too much food.

What will happen is that the average weight of the student body will rise.

I don't really care, I just think that applying this rule to teachers is a bit degrading.

I'm not their child.

There is a shop that a farmer couple opened up right next to the school. Teachers will usually stop by after lunch to grab a coke or some snacks.

When a few of us went in today we started cracking jokes about their dog. We figured it was probably going to be dinner some time soon. As the discussion progressed we decided to ask if we could buy the dog to eat. We figured it would be a pretty obvious joke and we would get a good laugh out of it.

Not so.

When we asked her she said that this one isn't good for eating — it was too small — but if we wanted she could take us to her house and let us have a look at their bigger dog. There was no tone of jest in her voice either. We kept talking about it trying to make sense of what was going on. She really didn't think we were joking! We told her we were only joking, but she wouldn't let it go. She wanted us to enjoy her dog! As we were leaving she saw us out and told us that if we ever were to reconsider she would take us over to her house to look at her big dog.

I couldn't believe it. If I joked about buying someone's pet to have for dinner in America I would be killed on the spot. If I joke about that here they offer the best tasting pet they own!

As promised, here is a recipe for 鱼鱼香肉丝 （yu xiang rou si). It's a spicy dish that comes from Sichuan. Sichuan is known for it's fantastic spicy food. Or so I'm told. If this is true it's no wonder my favorite dish so far comes from there. I plan to travel there in the summer. Who knows, maybe even move there if I really like it. Anyway, you all should try to make this because it's absolutely delectable.

You will need:

• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.


• 1/2 pound of pork, cut into 1 inch matchsticks.


• 1/4 pound of mushrooms, carrots, bamboo shoots, celery, etc. (Whatever vegetable you like. I prefer carrots and mushrooms or bamboo shoots.) Cut these into 1 inch matchsticks as well.


• 1 tablespoon of chili sauce (dried crushed peppers soaked in oil).


• 1 tablespoon of minced fresh ginger.


• 2 tablespoons of minced garlic.


• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce.


• 2 teaspoons of brown sugar dissolved in the soy sauce.


• 1 teaspoon of vinegar. If you've got any Chinese vinegar handy, use that. It's brown, I suspect it's mixed with soy sauce or something. If not I'm sure white vinegar would work fine.


• 2 or 3 chopped scallions.


• 1 teaspoon of cornstarch, if necessary.

Serves 2. Serve with rice.

Heat up your oil in a wok. Brown your pork strips, then remove them and save them for later. Stir-fry your vegetables for a minute or two. Add the chili sauce, ginger, and garlic. Stir-fry for another minute or so. Add the soy sauce/sugar mixture, vinegar, pork, and scallions. Mix it all up, cover it up and let it simmer for a bit. If you would like, dissolve some corn starch in a little water and add it to thicken up the sauce. I find it unnecessary.

If you don't have enough sauce just add a bit more water, soy sauce, vinegar, or oil, to taste.

I can't vouch for these measurements because I do everything by eye to taste. I'm constantly tasting the sauce to see if I need to put in anything else. I got the measurements off another website so I would be saying things such as, "Umm, get some pork, and carrots — a little less carrots than pork."

You will notice from the picture that my matchstick chopping skill are not very good. I'm still working on that.

So now I assign you all homework. Go make this and tell me what you think! Or else....!



Coming soon! La Chao Hua Ga! Sorry, I don't know the characters or the meaning... But it's tasty stuff. I think my old man would like it. So Mom, you'll might have to make the next one! Don't worry, it's ridiculously easy.

I've been cooking at home quite a lot recently. Not just the same old stuff. I've decided to learn how to cook Chinese food. I don't want to just cook it, I want to make it taste darn good. I'll put some recipes and pictures up after I've made something absolutely delicious. That should happen later this week.

Something that made me laugh though. Back home we would make "stir fry" every now and again. Basically some beef and vegetables fried up and served with rice. This would be the name of every dish served in China if i called everything cooked like that stir fry! But noooo, the names of Chinese foods make absolutely no sense!

One example I can think of is 鱼香肉丝 （yuxiang rou si). Probably one of my favorite dishes and I'll most likely post the recipe up here later. But the name literally means something like fish flavored meat (in this case pork) threads. The problem is that there is not a hint of fish flavor whatsoever. Stinking misleading food names.

There are stranger names, but I can't seem to remember them right now.

but I'm beginning to tire of Chinese food a little bit.

I need to go to Jackie's and get a big bacon cheese burger.

On a side note to my last post on food. I'm not positive exactly what pits of the sheep I ate. My friend wouldn't give me the specifics, he only pointed down there but refused to go into detail.
So it could have been sheep testicles... but they seemed a bit long to be. I'm really not positive.

Not like any of you need clarification.

Last night I ate 1 chicken kidney, 3 chicken heads, 5 silk worms, 2 sheep penises, and a few other normal things.

Chicken brain is rather tasty. (The rest of the head isn't bad either)

Sheep penis has a strange texture.

Silk worms are delicious.

And I'm still amazed by how we all just spit the bones and silk worm shells straight onto the table without a second thought.

A couple weeks back I got sick. Actually I've been sick three times since coming to China. Nothing very bad. It only kept me from work once. They were only colds.

The last time I was sick I decided I was going to knock it out before it had a chance to know what was coming. So I went to the restaurant I frequent and told them I had a soar throat. They gave me a Spinach and garlic dish and a big bowl of chicken and mushroom soup.

Now, in China if you order and dish with chicken or duck it's almost a guarantee that you will hear the cook slamming a meat cleaver down chopping a whole chicken into bits. They don't take the meat off the bones, they make you do that. They just hack it to bits and let you pick out the bones.

The soup was great. You've got to love China.

I ate Donkey dumplings the other night.

School Trip.
On Friday my classes were canceled so that I could help take a bunch of the kids out on a trip. 15 of us crammed in a little van with 9 seats and picked up two more guys who were to be our guides. One of them turned out to be a climber! The kids actually got to do some repelling with his help.

After a long drive we arrived at a little restaurant/rest stop type place. They told us that they didn't have any lunch for us. But that if we caught a couple chickens they would make those for us. So we started hiking up the mountain looking for chickens. Half and hour later we had two chickens. And several minutes later we had two dead chickens. They made our kids kill the chickens. Something about watching your students slit a chickens throat with a big smile makes you see them in a different light...

Then we were able to go hiking for real. It was beautiful. The air was clean...ish. You could even drink the water from the streams. I really do love the landscape here. I'll have pictures as soon as possible.

Friends.
I'm really lucky. I haven't mentioned it much, but I already have a couple good friends. They are some of the only people who don't see me as the token white guy. I think. But I'm blessed none the less.

In my apartment complex all the people are getting to know me. I'm like the pet American there. It's actually quite fun. It gives me a chance to practice my Chinese, which is coming along but I still meed to study a lot.

I also have a couple jogging buddies. You know, people who say hi to you every morning but nothing more. As you might know, I wake up at 5 to go jogging. There is only one other jogger that I see who does not stop jogging every 15 seconds. I don't know why everyone will jog and then stop, then jog, then stop. It doesn't make sense. But at least one guys jogs for real! Then there is this other girl who says hello to me every morning. She walkes the other way, I think she wants to practice english but unless she starts jogging I'm not going to stop! ^_^

Food.
The other day at lunch we were served, among other things, a plate of tomatos chopped up in big chunks with a lot of sugar on top. You must find some ripe tomatos and try this.

And yesterday I had some dish that was made out of the watermelon rinds. And it tasted so good! I want to learn how to make it.

I also started making my own pasta. It turned out very yummy yesterday.

I have a dog? Apperently so.

He's a cute little guy. Really tiny. I'll put pictures up when I can. The internet thing is kind of hard to get working.

Other than that everthing is great. I'm really busy. Leave my house at 8am get home between 6 to 9pm. I have some really hard classes. I need to write Mr. Chase and apologize for being such a terrible student. Anyone have his email? I'll bet not. If so, email it to me.

I teach this korean class every morning Monday to Friday and they are just the biggest brats ever! Seriously, they suck the will to live out of you.

But I also have some really great classes with some wonderful students. So it works out alright.

Let's see...

I walked into a class that wasn't mine and started teaching the other day.

I did my hair in a fohawk and got a myrid of reactions from handsome to old man to monkey. They aren't allowed to do anything to their hair in Chinese schools.

I almost got hit by a bus the other day. I jumped back to avoid it and almosted got nailed by a car. I love the driving here.

I will get a bike soon.

On Saturday I went out to an extremely depressing zoo. There were two lions in a cage the size of my loft.

I also ate pigs blood (so much for my leviticus class!) and starch. I'm serious, just starch in a coffee and cream colored liquid. I think it's only a YanTai thing. It was not good. But the pigs blood wasn't bad.

My adult class said I had a nice voice and tried to get me to sing for them. Maybe I'll bring my guitar one day. That class is like my breath of freash air!

That about does it!

And I'm doing very well at that.

Sorry it took me so long to post anything. The Great Firewall of China is a tricky thing to deal with.

An overview of the week:

• My plane from HongKong was late. I got in at 1:30am. Bummer.


• I lived in the school's apartment for a few days while I got cleared to move into my own.


• My apartment is awesome. It's about 15 feet high with a loft over my kitchen and bathroom. If I can every get my computer online I'll post pictures.


• I've already had my share of adventures including:
  
  • Eating chicken heart, head, feet. Cow stomach. Crab (shell and all). I might add that none of these things tasted bad.
  
  
  • Dealing with Chinese traffic. I love it, you can do anything. Yellow lines mean nothing. Bikes and people go diagonally accross intersections withint even looking. It's all the things I've wanted to do in the States!
  
  
  • Having some kid try to throw a brick through our school window...(!)
  
  
  • Having people not trust me as a teacher because of my age, but being convinced to let me teach their kids because I'm white.
  
  
  • ...and many more
  
  
• As you might have gathered the school is going through a bit of a hard time, but I'm confident that everything will work out. Every person on staff now is incredibly nice. My boss and the office girls are very helpful. The other teacher is probably the nicest person I have ever had the honor of knowing. And he's this 50 year old biker from Montana that came here with his wife to study Tai Chi! How great is that!


• I don't know a single like-minded person, but I don't think that I have even been closer to my dad then ever before. I love how he works everything out.
  
• I get up at 5am every morning so I can run by 6. And by then it is already over 80 degrees. But I usually jog by the ocean and swim for a bit as well. It's very nice.


• For some reason people get married early in the morning. And living by the beach I hear a ot of weddings. I hear them because they set off massive fireworks at 6 or 6:30am. Not little things. I'm talking about fireworks shooting 10 stories high and setting off car alarms. At 6:30am...


• I'm teaching more Koreans than Chinese.


• Every day brings a surprise!