Would you like rice with that?

According to Filipinos, a meal without rice is not a meal at all. Even at KFC and McDonalds (which are as common here as in Kentucky I'd wager) you can get rice instead of fries or cole slaw. In Cebu i experienced the ingenious invention of "hanging rice" they put the uncooked rice into a pouch made of woven palm leaves, dip it in water to cook and voila! Personal sized portable rice packet!

This abundance of rice is something I've been experiencing my whole life at FACC (Filipino thanksgiving- turkey. . . with rice). Anyway, since I left Denver in August I think (it's hard to know for sure without access to a scale on a regular basis) that I had lost a few pounds. When I travel, I actually tend to eat a lot less and walk a lot more. The walking a lot is easy to explain, when you are traveling (at least the way I travel) all you tend to do is walk. I arrive in a new place and I walk around to get a feel, walk to where ever I'm staying (when I can) and a lot of my favorite travel activities involve walking (long hikes in the mountains- basically walking all day). But why don't I eat as much? For one thing, thinking about food all the time is exhausting when you are traveling- you need to constantly be finding new places, eating takes a lot of time and when I'm alone sometimes I just don't bother.

But in the Philippines with my parents things are different. First, I'm with my parents and it's not good for them to skip meals. Second, we have been staying with friends of theirs- in Davao, with their Peace Corps family and in Bohol and Cebu with family of friends from Denver. They don't let me skip meals- good Filipino cooking doesn't let me eat light . . . lots of rice with every meal. Thanks to my wonderful hosts in the RP any pounds lost have all come back! Talk about lost and found . . .