July 20, 2003 Sunday
It rained today. All day. I got wet. Very wet. We were supposed to have a cookout with all the exchange folks today. People still showed up with their meat (it was BYO meat), though. We ended up walking, in the rain, to a close by area with restaurants and stuff. A ten minute walk is short in good weather, in the rain it’s quite long. We must have looked weird…40 kids holding plastic bags w/ meat, walking in the rain. Oh,well. Back to the mall by the house to do a little grocery shopping.
Grocery shopping. Sounds simple, right? It made me hate this place, for a little while anyway. They don’t have any of the foods I eat back home. None. No Eggo Waffles, no Pillsbury biscuits, no chicken strips, and forget about those microwave Salisbury and chicken fried steaks or marinated fajitas from H-E-B and my beloved Totino’s pizzas. Don’t even ask about Mexican food. Apparently, Old El Paso is the only company to manage to find Australia on a map and send their food here. There isn’t even a section for it. The Old El Paso shelf in the Asian food section, don’t ask me why. You know it’s the lowest traffic area in the whole store because that’s where they put the ladies cooking the free samples. “No one ever buys Mexican food…we’ll put a person grilling meat right in front of the entire shelf. No one will even notice.” I’m sure it went something like that.
They also have this strange fascination with meat pies, something they inherited from the British. It's just like a chicken pot pie, but filled with beef and gravy instead. Pretty messy, actuall, but Gareth loves them.
This was all kind of depressing. I’m going to have to actually cook things. When I’m hungry I want to eat, not cook. Oh, well. Still, this country is so backwards. More on that later.