Waiter, there's an ant in my rice.

Sunday when we were driving home from Owen's birthday party we noticed that our driver was a little upset.  Well, more than just a little so I asked him if he was okay, which he obviously wasn't, but that's the only appropriate thing I knew how to say in Chinese.  We were pretty sure it wasn't something we had done since it usually takes us at least a month to emotionally scar our drivers.  Not knowing what else to do, I called Amanda, my Chinese teacher, and asked her for help.  Luckily she wasn't standing on the Great Wall this time and I explained the situation to her.  I handed the phone to Li and they spoke for about a minute.  She informed me that his mother was very sick and in the hospital which is why he was upset.  When we were getting out of the van I told him that I was sorry about his mother and if he needed the day off on Monday to let us know.

Monday morning Li showed up to take Tim to work and since I didn't hear anything, I texted him and asked for him to be here at 10.  I planned on picking up Angie, dropping Ryan off at Jessica's, then going to the Thai Restaurant for Angie's birthday.  While we waited for Li to show up, Ryan and I went outside for a while.  Some farmer type people have started selling fresh vegetables on the driveway right in front of our building so I went to check things out.  I started buying all kinds of things, Chinese eggplant, mushrooms, long beans, spinach (I think!), some sort of lettuce and a potato that resembled a yam.  Ayi came along while I was out there and pointed to the regular potatoes she is used to seeing in our fridge but I said that no, I wanted to try some new things.  I think she thought I was a little nutty when she saw all the stuff I picked but don't really know how to cook.

At 10 o'clock Li hadn't shown up so I checked my phone and found a message from him asking if he could come at 11.  I knew right then that this day was not going to go smoothly.  I asked Angie if perhaps her driver could take us.  He could but because he wasn't at her house we would have to wait for him. I figured that was better than hoping that Li would actually be able to make it for eleven so I called Li and told him he didn't have to come at all.  Eventually we got Ryan dropped off and we made our way to the Thai restaurant for lunch.

Angie had never eaten at this restaurant and in fact hadn't had Thai food before but I was pretty confident that she would like it.  Everyone I know that has gone to this place enjoys the food.  We ordered Pad Thai, a beef and veggie dish and an order of fried rice served in a hollowed out pineapple half.  The food was tasty and as I had anticipated, Angie enjoyed her birthday lunch.  After our bellies were full we were sitting there chatting when I glanced over at a glass on the far side of the table.  Crawling up the side was a tiny black ant.  I wasn't too concerned, one little ant isn't anything to get upset about.  I killed it and we just laughed it off.  Then I took a little closer look at the plate that our pineapple rice was sitting on.  Sure enough, there was another ant motoring along.  Before it was dead I found another.  Angie then pointed at the pineapple she had been eating from and said, "What's that?".  I grabbed the plate to get a better look and sitting in the rice on the edge of the pineapple was a tiny, non-ant insect.  I poked at it with my chopstick and it moved.  I quickly called the server over and pointed to the bug in the rice and showed her the napkin with the three dead ants in it.  Another lady joined her to look and as the first one was apologizing and taking the plate away, the second woman was pointing to my pineapple dish to show her yet another creature of some kind.  I've been getting chills just writing this and I have to keep scratching my head.  Luckily Angie is a good sport and wasn't too put off by the whole thing.  We had a good laugh about it (what else can you do?) and actually I was a little relieved that at least the people working there knew that bugs in the food is a bad thing.  And no, we didn't have to pay for the rice.  You were wondering that, weren't you?

Shortly after getting home from the birthday lunch ordeal it was time to walk to Carrefour to meet Nick.  When we got there the lady and her son that we met last week were also waiting.  We had a quick chat and exchanged phone numbers.  As it turns out, they have only been here for a month which would explain why we have never seen them before.  This morning we ended up meeting Liliana and Aiden (her three-year-old) outside and they came in for a visit.  She is a very sweet person and we had a nice talk.  Tomorrow she is going to come shopping with us so I can show her YooHoo and Ole and, if we have time, any other fun places we like to go.

I had my Chinese lesson this afternoon and, since she was here, I had Amanda call my driver to find out how his mother is doing and see if he is going to be able to work tomorrow.  Luckily she is improving somewhat so he will be able to take us for groceries.  We need a few things to go along with the veggies I bought yesterday (and more again today!).  I did a stir fry with onions, garlic, long beans, spinach, mushrooms, and the Chinese eggplant, which Amanda informed me would never be put in a typical Chinese stir fry, but it was pretty good.  The kids even ate some of it.

I guess that's it for now.  I must get to bed soon as I'm not used to getting up at 6am.  It's tiring.  So long!