Too much information

Yes, my friends, today I finally did it. I busted out the long underwear. It's the start of a long, cold winter season.

PS- I'm in Paris, and it's wonderful!

I'm a fork girl in a flat of chopsticks

Last night, being low on food and not feeling like cooking, I made scrambled eggs and toast for dinner. My Thai and Chinese flatmates were in the kitchen at the time and could not get over the fact that that was all I was eating for dinner. No rice? They kept looking at each other and then me and asking me all sorts of questions. They kept asking what kind of eggs I was using, and I kept giving them strange looks, saying "normal eggs." I finally figured out the answer they were after was scrambled eggs. I then had to go through the different ways you can cook eggs. Cooking eggs was like a new idea for them. I've seen them eat eggs - this means that they crack a raw egg over a bowl of noodles and stir it in. I find that much more strange than eating scrambled eggs for dinner. Oh the beautiful differences in cultures. It's always entertaining and eye-opening but sometimes frustrating, I'll admit.

It's cold, rainy, and WINDY but life is good

I finished up with classes yesterday! I can't believe semester 1 is already over. (Americans take note - I finished with classes the same day as everybody back at Baylor, but I didn't start school until Sept. 25. Also, my master's program is 12 months long. Lesson learned? Go to England for grad school). All my friends are leaving this weekend to go home for the break, and campus is getting quiet. I'll be here by my lonesome until Dec. 20 when I leave for Paris. I'm actually looking forward to these next two weeks of peace and quiet. I have two papers to research and write, which is going to be a really tight deadline to make. The papers are my final exams for my classes. They take finals here in January, so I have to get the papers finished before I leave to travel because I'll only have a few days left in January after I get back to turn them in. I realized today that I'm already looking forward to January and everybody coming back and starting new classes. I love my program and I'm excited to start my new classes and have those catch up chats with friends to hear about everybody's break. So, in a nutshell, I'm happy and life is good.

Oh, this past week, I have eaten rice pudding, minced pies, christmas cake, and christmas pudding (which is not really pudding). The English love their seasonal desserts. The last three all involve lots of raisins, spices and marzipan and I do my best to avoid them unless I can't say no without offending the host(ess). The taste isn't worth the calories. The rice pudding is actually really good. I'd eat it any time of the year! Christmas season also means mulled wine. It's like hot wine with cider spices in it. It's pretty good and keeps you warm. It's so funny how different our foods are from each other considering we were a British colony. Apparently, the colonials came to their senses when they came to the New World and developed some new recipes, saving us all from a life of eating mushy peas and steak and kidney pie.

PS- If you have any interest in investigative journalism or history, read Tell Me No Lies by John Pilger. I'm reading it now, and it's really inspiring.