I'm 31 Already!

30 rocked and judging by how I entered into my 31st year on this planet, 31 will be just as awesome! I spent my birthday eve catching up with friends from home on Skype. My Mom and roommate sang Happy Birthday to me as the clock struck midnight. I had great Korean food with some classmates for lunch, then we went to get a two hour massage (foot and body!). I took a nap and then got my haircut. 8 of my friends took me to dinner at a fantastic sushi place - it was awesome to be surrounded by new friends, all but one of whom are from other countries! Michael bought me the panda hat in the picture and made me wear it most of the evening. Mei Xian, Masami and Ashley bought an assortment of cakes as a birthday cake, and they all sang happy birthday to me in English and Chinese! Very cool! After dinner, we went to a Korean bar and had several rounds of soju (Korean alcohol). Then, we proceeded to a nearby karaoke bar. Karaoke is not done like it is at home. In China, you get your own room, with u-shaped couches, tv, microphones and song lists. It's a good set up because we didn't sound all that great! We sang for about 5 hours...got home at 5 AM this morning. Not a bad way to start 31 in my opinion!

The only bad thing about turning 30 is the gray hairs that have started to sporadically show up. Bonnie, a co-worker of mine from BB&T, first experienced this as she talked me into coming to work after I found my first one early in 2009. She convinced me that finding a gray hair was not worthy of a sick day. Mei Xian got to experience my horror of finding four (4!!) more late last week. I started screaming in the bathroom and she ran in thinking I had hurt myself. After she stopped laughing at me, she plucked them out for me. I'm just going to have to think of the gray hairs as battle wounds, kind of like my appendix scar.

Last week, Mei Xian and I had street food for dinner. I actually had meat on a stick that cooks in the boiling water you can see in the picture, before I was only brave enough for vegetables. There are skewers of all kinds of different meats, vegetables, tofu and eggs. They cook in spicy water or slightly seasoned water and they are really cheap! We had dinner for $1 each and, although we didn't know what we were eating, it was tasty!

Ashley, Anna-Lina and I attended an all day cooking class in a hutong last weekend. It was great! We did a market tour where the teacher taught us about the spices used in Chinese dishes, explained the different parts of the animals that are used, talked about how to make tofu, etc. Back at the teacher's house, we made three fantastic dishes: gong bao chicken, Canton-style steamed fish and ginger custard. I learned how fish are actually killed (bang it over the head with a mallet) before eating, that you can eat the scales once a fish has been steamed, the proper way to use a wok and that you add salt to a dish to make it taste salty. (After a series of explanations such as, 'add light soy sauce for flavor, add dark soy sauce for color, etc. I asked why we added salt. The teacher turned her head and said, "to make it salty". Probably the dumbest question she'd ever been asked! It was embarassing.) We chopped, steamed and stir-fried all of our own dishes, and I didn't make myself sick! I touched raw chicken and slit my own fish, quite an accomplishment for me. The recipes are really easy and delicious, and I hope that I can recreate them whenever I have a kitchen again! ;)