Wow, four posts in one day!  I'm pretty sure I didn't post four times in the two years I had my last blog. I guess that's a good sign this one will actually survive! :)

This is actually just an update/extension of my last post.  Remember how proud I was after surviving lunch today?  That was NOTHING compared to dinner.

Fact:  Even before becoming vegetarian, I didn't like fish.  Salmon, shrimp, etc---Dad loves it; I can't stand it.

For dinner today, we had "hot pot".  For those of you unfamiliar, there's a pot of boiling water (with spices, etc) in the middle of the table, and plates of raw food that you put in the water, then eat.  Kind of like fondue.  Anyway, I really liked going to eat hot pot in China, and I would just eat the vegetables (potato, cabbage, lotus root, etc) and noodles.  It was delicious.

But apparently that doesn't work as well when someone else is serving your food.  Especially when they give you a big scoop every time they say, "just try--if you like you can take more".  One can't say no to trying something...even if it is WAY bigger than a no-thank-you bite. :)

I ate:
-Shrimp.  I remember why I didn't ever eat it...  I also very much do NOT enjoy pulling it apart.
-Dried fish.  As in, a whole fish.  They're like 3 inches long, still have their fins and you can tell where the eye was.
-Some rolled up pork thing.  Not bad...except the texture.
-Beef.  This was the most familiar...except the huge bone I had to pull it off of.
-Crab.  Again, I remember why I didn't eat this before.  Some long thing with a super strange texture.  4 pieces!  Bleh.
-Egg-dumplings full of some sort of meat?

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of my system, I can be proud of myself again.  I've never thought I had an issue with texture but I have never come so close to puking at dinner.  Luckily, I didn't.  (That would have been awkward my first day...)

I do not like eating meat.  Not even a little bit.  But still, I am so grateful that I have been able to do so with only minimal gag reflexes, and that I don't feel really sick.  And hey, I'll take blessings where I can get them! :)