a sunday by any other name...

i just came from a baby shower, and i'm exhausted! i really enjoyed honoring my friend melinda, and i really enjoyed meeting her neighbors and a few other friends. all of them are married, and all but one have kids of their own, so yeah, i felt slightly out of place. nothing better to remind me that God's timing is perfect for me! i'm so glad i wasn't one of them!

but it was also a small world... i started talking with one woman who is from oklahoma. then i chatted it up with the host, who graduated from OU. and her husband did, too, though all of them a few years ahead of me. afterwards, when the husband and kids came home, i chatted with him for a minute, and he told me about a prank he played on his sophomore year roommate, who was a meteorology major. yeah, we're geeks. but i enjoyed playing the small world game again.

but yeah... meeting all those new people took it out of me. proof yet again that i'm an introvert.

after church today, i went to dim sum! so delicious! the place we went only had chinese (cantonese, i think?) on the menu, and the servers barely spoke english. aside from 2 other white guys across the room (eating with an asian family), elijah, joe and i were the only white people there. it was great! as elijah said, it's great to be an honorary asian! our friends on either side of us kept asking us what we wanted, or if we wanted the food being offered to us, and elijah and i could not find a way to communicate that even if you told us what something was, we'd never had it before, and therefore would have no idea if we'd like it or not.

let me back up a moment. dim sum is like a moving buffet. servers push around carts with all sorts of dishes, mostly smaller appetizer-like foods that come 4 to a plate. they then stamp a card that's on the table, and we all dig in (well, 4 of us at least). then another cart comes around with maybe 3 different dishes on it, and we pick things from that cart to share. at the end of the meal, the 9 of us had tried maybe 30 dishes, with some repeats. then we hand the card back to them, and they figure out how much our table owes. for this meal, our bill (tip included) came to $11/person. not too shabby for such a yummy meal!

so back to our table... elijah and i had no idea what we were being offered. we did understand "shrimp" or "vegetables", but not the names of the dishes! his philosophy was that he'd try anything once, and minus the green bell peppers, i complied. so worth it! it was a great experience to have, and quite authentic!

so tonight is a study session for a test tomorrow. sara hosted a going away party last night for some friends moving to cambodia, so she is hosting us tonight with her leftovers! i'm pretty excited! but now that means i should read some on my own, so that i have something to offer when we all get together tonight...

off to study i go!