Hungry?

Holy cow it's been a month since I last posted! Let me just tell you that working, homework-ing, cooking dinner for your husband nearly every night, and being pregnant makes you lose track of time. I'll try to do better...

Anyway, on to what I've learned this week. I was going to talk about what I learned on my trip to Springfield earlier this month, during which my husband and I visited several Lincoln sites. However, I found this today and I just couldn't wrap my brain around it very well:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081024/lf_nm_life/us_taiwan_contest

Really? Sixty dollars? Plus, I love the last sentence that says: "Taiwan's education ministry has halted campus-based eating contests while an investigation is launched." This makes me think that Taiwan's campuses have regularly scheduled eating contests, other than this annual one in the story. Who thought this was a good idea? What do the kid's parents think? This is very sad, that a basic necessity of life (eating) can be made into a potentially deadly sport. I feel bad for the student's family. Do things like that happen here? I have no idea. I work on a University campus and I can say that I have never heard of an eating contest here. I guess this isn't any different than hot dog eating contests or pie eating contests, but still... Gross. Maybe it's because I am too "girly" to enter myself into a binge eating contest. Maybe it's because I get too grossed out by vomit, which I'm sure is a staple at events such as this.

In case I've offended any previous "Big Stomach Kings" out there, here are a few Lincoln tidbits I found interesting:

Abraham Lincoln had a clean-shaven face until a little girl wrote him a letter saying that she thought he would look pretty nice with a beard.

Lincoln's oldest son Robert sold the house in Springfield to the state of Illinois for $1 as long as it remained in it's 1860 state and no one would ever be charged admission.

Mary Todd Lincoln was not the first woman Lincoln was engaged to.

Have a great weekend!!