The Grilled Cheese Experiment

I inhaled some msg the other day. I was making instant noodles - i'm lazy - and when I opened the flavor packet some of it poofed out. It clung to the inside of my throat and lungs. I was coughing for about two minutes. I thought I might die.

I have been dreaming of cheese. It's pretty sad. I had a dream I was watching my mother, brother, and sister and law eating cheese. Sometimes I just dream of a some carrs and goat cheese. I dream of havarti, brie, gouda, even a good old block of chedder would be nice right now.
Unfortunately, the only cheese in Lin'an is this processed singles crap. I'd love some kraft or something right now, but instead I'm stuck with valumetric brand processed cheese. It claims to be from New Zealand. It's foul, but I'm desperate. One of my favorite meals is grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. This is normally an easy process involving a can opener and a toaster oven, but not in Lin'an. I attempted to make tomato soup from scratch. It wasn't too bad. More of a tomato paste, but it could have been worse. I think I added too much salt. The grilled cheese was interesting. I don't have a toaster. I don't even have a frying pan, so I had to use my wok. So what I ended up having for dinner was some salty tomato sludge, and a wok-grilled processed cheese sandwich. I may have to keep dreaming.

So I'm going to start to explain why I'm in China. When I was 15 years old I was supposed to spend my summer volunteering at an orphanage founded by Mother Theresa in Nepal. Unfortunately, the program was cancelled, and in an attempt to find something else to do that summer, my brother made an offhand comment about how China was a cool place to go, so I ended up on a student educational travel program from Beijing to Kunming. I could get into why I had to spend the summer in some far away country rather than watching tv like every other 15 year old in America, but that itself is another story.
So anyway, I ended up in China in the summer of 1996 and totally fell in love. I don't know why. I remember I was in the small village of Xiahe, it's in the Gansu province in western China but it's considered greater Tibet, because it is more culturally similar to Tibet. Anyway, we were talking to one of the monks in the monastary and he was telling us how a lot of the monks weren't 'real monks'. They were either people hiding from the government, or military spying on the monks activities. I found this fascinating that these two groups of people could be living side by side in such a situation. It later became painfully clear that this was the case, as we saw a number of monks getting drunk and pinching some of my friends asses as they walked by.
Anyway, I'm not in Xiahe now, I'm in Lin'an. It doesn't have the same charm, but it has something. Poorly made processed cheese.