Shit

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before now, but since I got here, I’ve been the only intern not to have a roommate. Which was great for a lot of reasons, but was starting to get just a little bit lonely. Which is why I was SO excited for the arrival of the Australians, one of whom is my new roommate, Chrissy. Now that she’s here, I’m no longer the only western woman in the program. As nice as a fully immersive cultural experience is, sometimes you really just need to sit down with someone and talk about Ed Sheeran and Western television.

Chrissy and Guy arrived with tons of fuzzy koala toys and little gold pins from their YMCA (two of which are now in my possession), and brought a whole new culture to the table.

This is my final week of teaching at the YMCA College, and next week I’ll be going back to one of the family centers for the remainder of my time here. I’m pretty excited about life, but the weather vehemently disagrees. It’s been raining here non-stop all week. I now realize that the ultra-hot, sunny weather I’ve been complaining about was sheer luck, and this awful gray rain (Hello, SU) is, unfortunately, the norm for the summer. But I have hope that it will clear up this weekend.

Yesterday I had western style Spaghetti Bolognese for lunch. This is significant because it’s the first time I’ve had a meal sized dose of gluten since arriving here. I don’t have any sort of gluten issue, but eating the local food and thereby going without it for the past couple of weeks has really given me a new perspective. For one thing, I realize that gluten makes me tired, bloated, thirsty, and more liable to eat more gluten later. For another, eating the pasta and meat sauce felt like the richest, creamiest, heaviest food in the world after eating brothy soups and rice dumplings.

It’s so much easier to cut out processed food here than in the states. Just by eating locally, you really can’t help but eat fairly naturally as well. For example, most nights for dinner I go to the local market and get vegetables in broth, a rice dumpling with a simple meat filling, and maybe a sweet potato roll or bread bun if I’m craving something carb-y. But even the bread here is lighter, steamed, and more natural.

My only major issue with the food here is that all the desserts are gelatinous. If it can’t be steamed, frozen, or set, usually you can’t find it. At this point, I’d give just about anything for flourless chocolate cake, but hey, un-availability of heavy desserts isn’t exactly cause for alarm. Yet.

I did have this awesome steamed coconut the other day; they take the milk and turn it into this awesome pudding. And you eat it out of the coconut.

Alright, one last topic for this post: Toilet paper.

Let me explain.

More and more I’ve been noticing a recurring trend in the bathrooms I’ve come across here in Hong Kong. There are no toilet paper dispensers inside the individual stalls. Instead, there’s one big dispenser outside the stalls for the whole bathroom. I’ll leave it to you to figure out the consequence of not being aware of this situation.

Rather than argue about why this is inherently awful, I’d just like all of your prayers that I will, someday soon, adapt.