Wednesday, September 13 - Praying hard and eating well

It's good to have a well-stocked fridge - inside and out! My fridge is covered with magnetic poetry, which my second graders love to rearrange into statements like, "this shimmering fire must beat into mud cakes." Move over, Keats! My second graders are destined for fame!
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I finally got sick…sort of. I think it's more a reaction to the immune-support supplement I started taking recently. Whatever it was, it really kicked my butt for a couple days! Last night, I went to bed at 4:30pm! Unfortunately, that meant that I missed my Bible study group. I'm sad that I missed it because last night was prayer night, and I always enjoy connecting with the other girls and having a more intimate time of talking and sharing. (No boys allowed!)

I made up for it this afternoon (in a way) by attending a different prayer group - one hosted by the parents of one of my students. The parents and I were the only Americans; the rest (about a dozen) were Chinese Christians, many of whom spoke and prayed in Chinese! :)

This is typical Hong Kong cuisine: ramen! And yes, I did eat it with chopsticks. And a spoon. :)
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It was exciting to experience the fervor and enthusiasm with which these Christians pray!! They really know what it means to be a son or daughter of God and how to enter into His presence with the authority that comes with being one of God's own. I'm definitely going to go again next week. Maybe next week I'll stay the whole five hours (!!) instead of heading home after only three!

Okay. New topic. In my previous journal entry, I mentioned that I was trying to eat more healthfully, which I've been doing (and quite well, I might add). It's very easy to eat healthfully, as long as your refrigerator is well-stocked with healthful choices. Right now I've got lots of good foods from which I can choose. Yay me! :)

It's such a beautiful looking meal, isn't it? You know, I didn't even arrange it special for the picture. I really fanned out the cucumber just for me! Hey, just because I'm eating alone doesn't mean I have to just throw something on a plate...
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So, I decided to eat dinner at home tonight. Perhaps you're wondering if I've learned how to cook anything unusual yet. After all, I've been here more than five months, and that ought to be long enough to learn how to make some local foods!

Well, I haven't. :-P The trouble with cooking local stuff is that it takes a very long time and is also very complicated! The one time I made anything Malaysian was back home at my sister's place: the very Malaysian chicken rice. It's probably the easiest thing to make here! Boil both the rice and chicken in chicken broth and serve it up! Very tasty! Of course, if you want to add a vegetable, sautéd kai lan with minced garlic is a good pairing. :)

Tonight's dinner was a mix of local and western: dory filet with garlic seasoning, sliced cucumber, baby carrots, dates, brown rice with red beans, and ice lemon tea. Now you're probably thinking, Hey, all that sounds really normal. Well, it kind of is. But it's also kind of local, and here's why.

Garlic is hugely popular here, especially in Chinese dishes, so that makes this dory recipe a little more local.

Cucumbers are in almost everything as well – as a side with chicken rice, with nasi lemak (rice cooked in coconut milk and served with curried chicken), and with satay (grilled chicken kebabs served with spicy peanut sauce); sliced into rojak (a salad of pineapple, cucumber, bean curd, prawn fritters, and boiled egg); and slivered into a dozen Indian salads as well. (It's ironic that neither of my coteachers like cucumber. Whenever they go out to eat and tell the server tanpa timun – "without cucumber" – they always get funny looks!)

Dates are one of the more popular foods that are eaten to break the day's fast during Ramadan, a month-long Muslim holiday celebrated to honor the month that the Qu'ran was supposedly revealed to Mohammed. This year, Ramadan falls in September, so dates are easy to find right now, and they're also really tasty!

Rice, of course, is a staple in most Asian countries, and I add the red beans for extra fiber and protein. It's nowhere near as good as Sean's jambalaya though!

Finally, ice lemon tea, or teh o ais limau as they call it, is probably my favorite local drink here. It's simply black tea with sugar and miniature limes, which are, surprisingly, much tastier than lemons!

So there's my not-so-Western dinner! :)