Eid Mubarak

Friday July 17^th,

Senior year is coming up much faster than I expected, forcing me to begin college applications. I spent some time on college essays this morning and researched the different options I have. It is honestly so overwhelming. Every time I get onto a college website to get one piece of information I end up spending at lease half-an-hour looking through all the options that I never knew existed.

I watched a movie in the middle of the day to get a break from all of it. Around 4, I decided I wanted a proper dinner. I have been expetionally lazy recently and have been eating random bits of food for meals. Looking at the ingredients I have, I decided to make egg biriyani (a type of Indian fried rice). I forgot how painful it is to cut onions until I found myself in tears just pealing the extra skin off of the first onion. A call from a friend during the cooking process made it a lot more fun.

As I mentioned in my last post, I think Joe and I are the only two at the guest house right now and Joe has been working long hours in the lab the past few days to get caught up with his work. Since I was the only one in the guest house while cooking, I blasted Pandora and sang my heart out. The cutting and cooking to far too long and I messed up in just about every possible way, but dinner was finally ready at 8.

The spices made it smell great, but I had no idea how it would taste.  I invited Joe for dinner, who was still working in the lab! Surprisingly the biriyani turned out very well and we both helped ourselves to multiple servings before finally calling it quits. I definitely have to thank my dad for being on the phone with me and guiding me through the cooking process! Though Joe and I weren’t able to celebrate Bayram with the locals, we are making the most of it in our own way.

(Sorry I didn’t get a good picture of the biriyani)