7 March

Today’s lunch was prepared by a friend of my roommate. From Canada, Renee is a film artist who made up some Indian curry with pumpkin and peas. It was delicious and had an interesting orange color. For the side he broiled up some seasoned potatos. I brought some Nan bread from the Muslim restaurant on the BLCU campus and my roommate watched as Renee also made the spinach salad.
My roomate John is in the background. The tiny woman in the picture is our Ayi (Ah-ee). This is a word commonly used for a maid or, probably the modern word would be “domestic assistant.” She is very enthusiastic about working for the laowai (laow-why) or foreign people, and she was busy taking notes on how to cook the food. According to my roommate, she has a foriegn food cookbook and enjoys cooking those crazy foreign foods for John. (Actually I might be spelling that wrong. John is French-Canadian so it might be Jon or Jean.)

Unfortunately I had already eaten some of the oily but inexpensive food from BLCU so I wasn’t very hungry. Due to the novelty of the situation and the appealing colors of the food, I ate anyway.