C'est la Vie

This evening I found myself eating dinner and watching the BBC News and a Bundesliga football game. This led to some pondering. Questions like "When did chop-sticks feel comfortable in my hand?" "Why does rice with cooked lettuce, clams, and egg taste so good?" and "Why did I have to come half way around the world to watch a game of soccer?". The answers to these questions may not ever be answered like many of life's deepest mysteries. Chop-sticks are not only comfortable in my hand, they now feel like the "right" way of eating. As for the food I relish everything I eat, and crave certain foods like dumplings or pearl milk tea. Actually its hard to imagine life without them much like it was hard to imagine a life without Monday night pasta. At dinner I generally write in my dairy or "travel journal". I found myself recording and rereading some of this past weekends events which include fun and furry.

Friday night was a trip to the ever popular Ximen district, where masses of exchange students can be found walking about or eating dinner. That night my personal goal was to dine at Modern Toilet, and eat my dinner out of a toilet bowl. Modern Toilet is a restaurant that servers its meals in miniature sized toilets, while their customers sit on toilets. In fact the entire restaurant is based off of toilets. Some find the idea revolting while others find it incredibly amusing. Regardless of your personal thoughts there may be some cultural significance to Modern Toilet. I've read that Modern Toilet is profitable in Asia because bodily functions are culturally accepted for what they are and not generally fussed about.

Either way my friends and I thoroughly enjoyed Modern Toilet. I was seated on a toilet molded to the ground and the table top was glass over a bathtub. There was even a faucet on the wall. My friends and I found that the difficulty of eating at Modern Toilet wasn't the gross factor at all. The hardest part was preventing your dinner from coming out your nose because of all the laughter. The largest mystery of all was what type of toilet was in Modern Toilet's bathroom. The answer is just a simple squatter.

After all the fun I climbed onto a bus to head back home. After watching for my stop for over an hour I realized that the bus I was on wasn't going anywhere near my house. I was left on the bus with nobody but a laughing child who knew I was lost. To make matters worse it was ten minutes before my curfew and it was late. Luck wasn't on my side and instead of a central bus station I was dropped off at a dark and deserted park. I started walking fast in the direction I'd came from. I didn't find any bus stops that would bring me back home though so I called my host family. I was in quite the predicament because I didn't know where I was and had no way of finding out and my host family didn't know where I was. I found a helpful and nice convenient store worker and asked for help. After she talked with my host father for several minutes she told me to wait there. After mulling around the store for a while my host father appeared.  Expecting furry or disappointment I was greeted with a smile. I owe my host family so much and I'm grateful that they put up with me. They even flatter me by saying I'm good. I wave goodbye to my new friends and climb into the car to find a grinning host sister and a host mother with a plate of fruit. I couldn't be luckier.

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