Long Time No Blog!

So my mommy casually reminded me the other day that I have not been keeping up with my blog. Many apologies my friends! So what has been new...vegetables. I crave them. Now, don't get me wrong because China does in fact have vegetables, but I have not consumed them in over a month. I have now been in China for over two months (hard to believe) and when we first arrived a lot of the IES students traveled in a herd, most likely for self-preservation (and the comfort of knowing there are 12 other people there that also cannot read the McDonalds menus). While eating as a herd it was convenient to eat "family style" like typical Chinese. The menu would be passed around the table while the boys pointed to anything that resembled meat and grunted at the waitress and the girls politely tried to pronounce the vegetable dishes three times before the finally settling on a different pronunciation that was more likely less correct than the first three tries. And everyone got a bowl of rice. Eating proceeded in the manner for about a month and resulted in well-nourished, happy students. Well, at some point we all realized we were spending about $50 kaui ($10ish, actually less than $10) on each meal, and that realization led to the ultimate dispersement of the herd and the formation of smaller, nomadic tribes. Ordering individual meals is significantly faster and cheaper and just all around more convenient, but most places in China that have individual meal options seem to offer rice/noodles with some sort of meal. There may be a couple leaves laying on top of the meal, perhaps some veggies in fried rice, and chopped up bok choy in the dumplings but nothing that would amount to a full serving of vegetables (unless you ate 37 dumplings, and then you have another problem). So now I am writing this because all I want right now is a giant, heaping pile of steamed broccoli with butter drizzled on top and a little seasoned salt.