The list of foods Han Fei now enjoys since coming to stay with us:
sweet potato fries (her: ‘are these good for you?’  Me: ‘they were before they were deep fat fried’)
Pasta Salad (okay- not so bad)
Popovers with butter and powdered sugar… mmmm
Bread- Lots and Lots of bread.
Ranch Dressing- I’m not letting her put ketchup on almost anything- I introduced her to ranch dressing today as an alternative.  Now she loves it.
Pasta- but how can you go wrong with pasta?
Snickers.  Oops.
Tomatoes fresh from the garden (but really how can you not enjoy that?)

I claim no responsibility for bacon and sausage- that was purely UCLA cafeteria.

Saturday we’re having BLT’s on homemade bread with tomatoes straight from the garden- I’m excited for her reaction.

We went to  see How to Train Your Dragon yesterday and once again Han Fei was wildly impressed with how nice people are here. I had a punch pass with three punches left on it and was asking about how to buy three more tickets without purchasing an entire ten punch pass since this is the last week of summer movie camp.  A woman behind me offered two of her punches that they weren’t going to be using and a woman next to me offered one.  We didn’t have to buy any additional tickets at all.  She has been repeatedly impressed with the niceness of people.  Everyone who meets her is super nice- which doesn’t surprise me- they should be.  But she is so genuinely grateful for everything.  It makes it fun to do things for her.

I’m enjoying Han Fei’s gift of seeing my country and culture through new eyes.  She’s full of questions about all sorts of things and how things are done and people’s relationships and I’m finding myself explaining things that I’ve never had to explain before.  I told her I’m willing to classify things into subcultures:  Our family culture, Mormon culture, Utah culture, United States culture.   It is making me think of things and the ‘why’ behind the things we do more deeply.  I’m thoroughly enjoying this gift of a fresh look at my mundane life.