Cake and Crickets

The week of the 22 (yes, that is still October) I was doing laundry all week.  We both had meeting parts on Wednesday and that same day we welcomed a new couple to Myanmar.  Most of the other foreigners left for the district convention in Bangkok that Thursday, so on Saturday we took the new couple out and about to show them the ropes.  We walked them down to the Hledan Market.  As always there is lots to see there.

 

Carl and Nat are from New York City so they know about humidity and heat in the summer.  Even still though, we were all thankful for the air-conditioning in Junction Square.  We had a nice lunch at a Thai Restaurant (pronounced Tie, not Thigh, just in case you were wondering) and afterwards wandered around a little bit.  There was a  special event going on, some sort of baby food promotion, but there was singing and dancing for the kids.  

 The best moment was when one little guy sneaked onstage to join the giant giraffe.

In the evening we had planned a little dessert party for those of us that had not gone to Thailand for the convention.  I baked my first ever chocolate cake from scratch with chocolate frosting. It was amazing.  If I do say so myself.  I wanted to make it with cream cheese frosting but was unable to buy cream cheese at the store in anything smaller than a gigantic brick that was 20 dollars.  We went to House 1 for the party because it has the biggest table for games!  All the desserts were just yummy.  Things got a little crazy though when the newbies brought out a contribution:

Carl eating a deep fried cricket as featured in a previous post.

Mai from Japan shared some traditional dried squid.

Chocolate cake, crickets, squid and Pringles.  Extreme variety at it's finest!  I did not eat the crickets.  However, we did try the dried squid.  It was different.  You dip it in Japanese mayonnaise and it tastes like fishy jerky.  Beef jerky has nothing on this stuff though.  This stuff is super jerky!  You might be able to snack on one squid for a week.  After the crazy culinary experiments we played a couple games.  Dice 100 was a favorite, we were all worn out after 2 games.

Sunday we went to meeting.  There has been some remodeling work done in the building and we arrived to discover a new entryway.  We took pictures for our tiling buddies.

Just the basic tools

Who needs buckets when you have woks?

 After meeting we took Carl and Natalie to the market to show them around.  We walked up to Ruby Mart underneath the gold leaf bridge and jumbotron.  There is always a football (er, soccer) game going and people just stop or sit on the street to watch it.

We had dinner at the restaurant near the market and then had to walk quite a distance to get a reasonable taxi home.  For some reason that evening everyone wanted to charge us WAAAAAAY more than usual.  We ended up paying more than normal, but it was still less than some taxi's had offered.  Usually we don't have that much trouble.  Finally made it home and got ready for the next week.  Which was a big week.  You will see why next time!