Big Trouble in Little China

Greetings, friends from hot, hot China. I learned today that the reason my family doesn't use their air conditioning is because they, like most Chinese people, believe that cold air is not good for one's health. I had thought that they did not use the AC because they wanted to save money. Nope. Apparently sweaty skin sticking to the furniture is good for one's health. Now, I fully respect Chinese beliefs, but for me it is just too damn hot, especially at night. So right now I've got my personal AC unit going at a cool 20 degrees Celsius. Oh, yeah in addition to Chinese, I'm starting to get used to the Metric system! So now with my cool comfort needs satisfied, I can begin tonight's post. I have now learned that I should becareful what I say to my family. One day last week, I mentioned that I was really missing Western food and cooking. This led to a discussion on the differences between American and Chinese food. I mentioned that a lot of Western food is prepared in ovens. The Tseng family doesn't have an oven- most Chinese dishes are stir fried, steamed, or pan seared, very few at home dishes are roasted, that tends to be saved for the restaurants. Anyway, they seemed genuinely concerned that I was missing my familiar food, so they did one of the nicest things. They bought me a toaster oven. Now, I am incredibly grateful for their thought, but I have absolutely no idea what I can make in a toaster oven. Even if I did I doubt that I could find all the ingredients in China. And lastly, they don't have measuring cups here, so everything would have to be estimated. However, I don't want to be rude, so I have been searching for easy toaster oven recipes online for the past few hours. Hopefully they don't expect me to cook an entire dinner for them. That would be like trying to feed an entire restaurant using just an Easy Bake Oven. Now unfortunately, my cooking problem is the smallest of my woes. Today I got in trouble with the police. Any foreigner who comes to China and stays anywhere other than a hotel has to register themselves with the local police department within 24 hours of arrival. Well, I did that today... about 30 days too late. As a result, I was declared officially in violation of Chinese law. That sounds a lot worse than it actually is. All I had to do was fill out a form stating what law I broke, why I broke it, and then give my view point on Chinese laws. I however, do not yet speak fluent Chinese. So Doctor Tseng had to write out what I needed to say first, and then I copied what he wrote onto the form. It would have been easier had he just filled out my form, but it had to be completed by the guilty party. Red tape, it's a global problem. Regardless, I now hold a criminal record in China, a minor one, but a record none the less. The silver lining though is that I didn't have to pay a fine, which could have been anywhere from 20 to 100 US dollars. Plus, I now have some street cred. When I get back to America, no one's going to want to mess with China's most wanted.