Notes on food: Part 1

I find that one of the most pressing areas of cultural difference for people living in a foreign country is food. The international students talk about it all the time: how much they miss food from home, how they do a particular type of candy from the homeland but it's called something different, how Americans don't know how to make proper tea.

First of all, this being America, we found lots of fattening food in huge portions. Here is my new friend Charlotte holding a bucket of luridly coloured sherbet ice cream. We thought it was particularly gross, and there was a whole isle of the stuff. Supermarkets in the States have so much more choice and variety and generally go up to bigger size packaging.

Here is something we tried yesterday called Bubble Bubble Tea, which comes from Japan and seems to be catching on in Portland. See those little black spots at the bottom of the cup? Those are little balls of chewy tapioca. You suck up a mouthful of unusual tasting ice tea and then you chew up a bunch of squishy tapioca balls. Such a weird feeling.

Lastly I have discovered a new Reed subculture called the Scroungers. If you've just eaten in the cafeteria and have some leftovers, you put your tray on a particular shelf whereupon several people eat up yours and everyone else's spare food. They save a lot of money on board and it cuts down on waste food, but I'm not sure I could do it. I heard they only take one mouthful from each plate; that they have super immune systems from catching mild forms of everyone's colds; that last semester someone produced Scrounger trading cards with each Scrounger's strengths, weaknesses and favourite kinds of leftovers.