Food Blogs, Let's Do Food Blogs

I'm doing it, folks.

A blog that does with that introspective crap and goes full Marco Polo. Nothing too disturbingly personal written; this here is a culture blog.

I am experiencing new foods all the time in Shanghai, but I am also incorporating some into my weekly routine. I thought I would show you guys a bit of what my diet looks like over here.

Muslim Noodles

There are a lot of Muslim restaurants all throughout China, owned and operated by member of the same ethnic group, the name of which I have forgotten. No matter where you go, their hand-pulled noodles are famous and amazingly delicious. This dish features noodles, potatoes, beef, onions, and peppers. It's really good; especially the noodles. There's one right outside my apartment complex, and one right down the road from my school. Yummmmm!

While you're waiting for your food, they will bring out this delicious, soul-warming broth.

Just Some Dumplings

There's no culture that I know of about these dumplings. They're just really good. They come with this vinegar and chili seasoning that's just amazing. My Irish coworker Niamh and I are obsessed. We could bathe in this vinegar.

Xinjiang Street Food

In the Western, rarely spoken-about region of China is the Xinjiang Province. Xinjiang is home to a large, largely unknown ethnic group. Xinjiang Chinese actually look quite Indian or middle-eastern, and would never be identified on sight as Chinese people. But they are.

Anyways, every night at 9 PM they set up a grill and lay out skewers. You choose what skewers you want, and they throw it onto the grill. They throw on some AMAZING spices. Next, they take some bread, grill, and rub the same spices on it, they wrap the bread around your skewers, and wa-la!

Crazy spicy, crazy tasty.

And now I'm going to sneak in a little personal crap.

For those of you who saw my gold sequin outfit, it was because my boss asked me and a friend of mine to perform at the company's annual party. We sang a mash up of Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are and Bruno Mars' Just the Way You Are, and we won the competition y'all. I'll post a video if any of my friends ever send me one.

I was just offered an amazing job to teach at an international school in Kunshan. I'll be making the decision of whether or not to take it this week. Prayers, please!

Bye!

And That's Forever

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

This will be a brief update. I just want to keep you all aware of my upcoming plans and events. The longer, more interesting posts will be written after they happen. Here, they are:

January 19th: My company, Kidcastle, is holding its annual party. I, along with another teacher named Maddie, have been asked to participate in the performance competition that is apart of the party. The competition is between the company's after-school programs (us), the kindergartens, and the head office. Maddie and I will be singing "Just The Way You Are" by BILLY JOEL, not the more recent guy who name I am blanking on. We thought we would have a humble performance with a piano and a simple spot, but the bosses from the head offices really wanted to represent the team, which is the Gold Team. Thus, I will now be sporting a gold sequins jacket and matching fedora. So that's this Sunday.

January 28th-February 6th: This is the Spring Festival celebration time, the Chinese New Year. This is by far the most important holiday in China, the Eastern Christmas. Originally, I was going to use the time off to go exploring the beautiful Guilin and Yangshuo. Instead, though, my Chinese friend Daniel (I gave him the name) has invited me to celebrate with his family in a small town called Zoucheng. It will be, as you can see, a long trip, and is sure to be exhausting, but I am really looking forward to it. I feel incredibly blessed to experience such an authentic perspective of Chinese culture.

February 9th-February 23rd: I am coming back to the States, y'all. I will not be in one place this whole time, mind you. About 45% of it will be in North Carolina, awaiting a good womb burst from my sister. 50% will be in Orlando, with stage-side seats to my good friends' marriage, and 5% flying in and out of Tampa. I will be very busy, so you should not all be expecting private lunch catch ups. I should start holding a raffle for that.

All three of these things will have awesome stories that I will be sure to write about.

Please be praying for me; I always like more prayer. Pray for my peace of mind and assurance and peace from the Spirit. Pray that the Spirit and Word will come by my side and fight the forces.

Thank you; love you guys!

Travels and Manning Up

Happy New Year!

I'll do a quick retrospective, because I rock at those.

At the beginning of 2013, I bestowed upon the year to come with a theme: travel. I kept thinking and hoping 2013 would be the "year of travel."

And oh man was it. My flight to China was 18 hours long. I hardly slept at all on the plane. I had been up for quite a while, but when I got off the plane and took my first step on Shanghai soil, I felt more awake then ever.

I have met so many people. I've learned so much about the world, about myself, and about God. Man, I'm still learning so much about God; I'm in the process, the middle of it, still, which sometimes doesn't feel great. I'm fighting so many battles of anxiety, purity, legalism, doubt, and hardness of my own heart.

The theme I have bestowed upon the year 2014 is "man up." We'll see how well I manage to stick to that theme. My wish and determination is to learn more about the nature of God this year, and to figure out how that impacts the way I live my life. I'm taking some unbelievably big steps in my life this year, incredibly big and incredibly exciting and possibly some of the best things that will ever happen to me. Between the completion of these things and now is a series of hurdles and swinging axes. It's time I put on the armor of God, and use His strength to conquer my struggles and my demons. Pray pray pray.

My New Year's Eve was a load of fun. I went to the Bund with friends. It was packed with Chinese people and good deal of foreigners. The Chinese were all about taking pictures of me and with me, so I was having loads of fun making all sorts of new friends. I was playing my crazy laowai card pretty heavily, but everybody was having fun. Me and my friends have taken to randomly busting out in the Fresh Prince rap to confuse and entertain nearby Chinese people. We did a lot of photo bombing, mostly to the delight of the victims. Some were just plain scared.

It was realllly tough getting home. We couldn't find a taxi till like 3, and by taxi, I mean random guy in an SUV we paid to take us home. That didn't stop him from pulling over to every pedestrian on the way to our houses and trying to entice them into the vehicle.

Anyways, that's it.

Cheers to 2014!