In the Kitchen w/ HP

A story that my dad will enjoy the most:

Tonight was the students' gathering at the church for which we're each supposed to bring food to share for fellowship. For the past six days, I've been debating about what to bring that adequately represents my native melting pot country and is feasible without a baking tin and other various utensils. Finally I decided upon Caesar salad. Finding that the dressing cost almost 5 euros in a nearby Irish shop, I skipped on dressing and decided to replace it with more fresh tomatos, provolone cheese, cucumbers, blue cheese, onions, ham, salami and sardines. I found the last ingredients an hour before the get together, walked home and began cutting everything up. Happy with the look of the salad thus far, I cracked open the sardine container to find a few huge fish that were about 15xs as big as I expected, weren't salty and including scales and backbones (!). Admittedly, I made quite a stir in the kitchen exclaiming about the unexpected size and components of these fish but I did my best to dissect them and threw them into the salad. Arriving at church, I tried to explain to my mentor in broken French that the sardines were bigger than I expected and she smiled politely at me... the salad was good. A little fishy, but good. No one complained or even acted surprised...
---- two hours later----
Explaining what happened later to Olga, an English-Spanish girl, she said, "You put sardines in salad? In England, we use anchovies." Oh.

In other news, the Chinese feast last night was amazing. As soon as I was stuffed and thought we were done eating, someone else would come out of the kitchen and pass around another platter of more hot chicken, mutton, beef or vegetables. Topped with French wine, it was definitely quite a meal! Only regret, that I forgot my chopsticks at home.

Yet, in order to go to the feast, dinner with Félix was postponed. Bummer... Tonight, he invited everyone else to our dinner... Bigger bummer...

Highlight of the day (besides my fishy salad not making people sick): I was lent a CD/radio player and found a English/French Christian radio station. Listening to "I breathe You in; I breathe You out" I thought, "This sounds familar. Either it's extremely scary obsessive or it's about God..." Glad the second was true.