Everything's coming up roses

The other day as I was cutting up my meat with my spoon, my host family asked me if I ever want to have children of my own.  I tried my best, in Thai, to explain that while I might like to have children one day, I'm already 30 and unmarried, so it is unlikely that I ever will.  Instead, what I actually said was that, yes, I want children and I want to have 30 of them.  (hahahahaha!!!  Yeah. Right.)  As ridiculous as that was, it was received far better than what I did next.

When they passed me the chili powder, I took a pinch and sprinkled it over my food.   

I LOVE spicy food.  Love it.  So I was more than happy to sprinkle some much loved chili pepper over my guai-tiao and was quite excited to show them that even though I am white, I can handle my spice. 

When I used my thumb and index finger (as one normally would when pinching) to get the pepper out of the baggie, my family immediately broke into a tizzy.  They jumped up, ran around, yelled, and eventually grabbed my hand and stuck it in a bowl of water which they obtained during the fiasco.  Thankfully, that seemed to put out the fire I had unintentionally started.  No pun intended.  :)

As I sat there stunned and with my hand in a bowl of water, everyone else seemed to finally calm down.  This little faux pas totally rained on the spicy food parade I thought I was going to have that evening.  And instead of flaunting my tolerance, I was lectured on the dangers of touching chili powder in an environment where sweating is inevitable.  What if I had touched my eyes!  Or skin!  Oops. 

Luckily, I recovered and they trusted me enough to let me help them make flower arrangements, which I totally rocked.  So my parade was back on, and thank goodness!  Because little did I know, the next morning I was actually going to lead one.  More on that later. 

My flowers: (Toby and Tasha, I totally understand if you want me to do all the arrangements for your wedding this year.  Just say the word.  I'm the master flower arranger now!)

Before

During (one petal folded)

Finished product!