I ate a bowl of cereal with sour milk for breakfast this morning and didn’t even notice. For the last three mornings, I’ve woken up with little to no sense of taste or smell. It wasn’t until Zoe got up for breakfast and smelled the milk that I realized my morning’s mistake. Haha, we had quite a laugh! Half of the kids and Zoe have had a cold the entire time we’ve been here and I’ve been expecting to get it but the only thing that’s happened so far is losing my senses of taste and smell for a few hours each morning. Weird…

Instead of sitting for two hours in a musty gym and watching the kids during their Tae Kwon Do class (which we have done several times already), Zoe and I opted instead to spend the late morning in the sun, picking strawberries. A large section of the garden, and all the way around the house, is bursting with strawberry plants…hundreds of them! Dodging spiders, beetles and other various insects, Zoe and I thrashed our way through the foliage, attempting to obtain every luscious berry. Every few minutes one of us let out a screech because of a spider crawling across our toes, a disgusting half-rotten strawberry squishing between our fingers, or the worst: the evil spines of a stinging nettle finding it’s way into our knees, shins, or hands. After our attempts, Zoe’s bowl was twice as full as mine, but my tummy was twice as happy :) One for me, one for the bowl….

I’ve only been teased about being a vegetarian a few times in the last year and a half. The worst happened this afternoon. I went swimming with the kids for an hour and then came back to change clothes. We were going to the airport to pick up Richard (our supervisor) who will be staying the weekend here. Maria had hard boiled some eggs and gave me a few to eat for lunch. I peeled one and ate it. Just afterwards, Angela, the eleven year-old comes into our room, sits next to me on the floor, pats my tummy and says, “Oh…poor leetle cheek-hen….you keeled zee poor leetle cheek-hen and ate her!” My lame come back was to pat her tummy and say, “Poor little fishy.” Which is what she ate for lunch.

So between spoiled milk for breakfast and eating an unborn chicken for lunch, I’d say it was a good day for cuisine. Ha! Actually we eat a ton of fresh vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce and chives. We have different variations of vegetable soup every couple of days (I think this is to accommodate my vegetarianism), lots of bread and cheese and of course chocolate. I love the homemade food!

Well, that’s all for now. We haven’t had very consistent internet so I’ve been writing these on my computer and posting when I can. Right now I’m connected through Maria’s cell phone!