a tale of 2 stummicks

we've gotten some emails wondering how D's stomach is doing. most of you know about D's infamously bad innards. on past trips over here, he's been known to carry around packs of pepto, downing them like candy to "coat" his insides against whatever pesky stuff might react and send him running for the bathroom at the most inopportune times.

in the past two weeks, D's definitely had a rumble or two and immodium's been called upon. but our new theory is it's not the water, it's not the street food. it's CHEESE. he's minorly lactose in the states, but not usually with cheese. for some reason, cheese in chin(ar) just does not agree with D's insides. his first major rumble was after a lunch at Mickey D's. second major rumble followed a dinner of pizza. the only meals with cheese we'd had since coming. chinese food seems to be fine. korean too. we've been testing the hypothesis by *trying to avoid cheese (D is sad), and making up for it by going for the street food instead (D is happy). seems to be working so far.

we can't figure it out...does anyone with medical knowledge care to weigh in?

in other stomach news, C's normally iron hard insides were shockingly the first to take a major hit. we won't go into the gory details, but she was running for the bathroom every hour on the hour for 36 hours. could have been a stomach bug, but we're wary of the western lunch had the afternoon prior to which the messiness commenced...all the signs of classic food poisoning.

lessons learned:

(1) eating street food is not bad for you. in fact it is quite glorious.

(2) cheese in china = bad news for D

(3) western food, even in a "nice" restaurant, can cause major vomiting

be wary of the western food.*

*note: McDonald's ice cream is an exception to this rule