May the Year of the Dragon bring you prosperity!

I wish you all a wonderful Year of the Dragon!!

What? Now what’s wrong with her? She’s disappeared from the blogosphere since the end of the year festivities, and here she comes back, completely out of it, almost a month after New Year and wishes us a great Year of the Dragon?? What in the world is going on?

My dear friends of the culinary blogosphere, I am coming back to you for this new year (2012, of the Dragon, all in all, it doesn’t really matter) live from Shanghai!!!

Yups, Shanghai, China, you got me right

I won’t get into detail about all that has happened to me since mid-december 2011, for that’s not the purpose of this blog. But just to give you a bit of context, I passed an exam that was extremely important to me, and for which I spent an entire summer and autumn literally glued to my desk chair. (It is also during this same autumn that this blog was born – cooking proved to be an incredible stress reliever at a time where I was seriously starting to go nuts :p)

Following those excellent news, it all went pretty fast for me : the enrollment protocol, choosing between different options, and most of all, choosing my first mandatory internship.

China has always been a passion of mine, and it’s not my first time in the Middle Kingdom. But never have I come with the intention of setting my bags down for 6 months to work there. It’s a totally new side of this magnificent city that I am getting ready to discover.

I have since moved into a great internationally shared flat, 2 minutes away from the very well known « People’s Square », my internship is starting out wonderfully … and I have a new kitchen.

MyRedKitchen has temporarily relocated : the kitchen cupboards aren’t red anymore, the hotplates aren’t induction anymore but gaz, the fridge is smaller, and shared by three persons, each with tastes and culinary habits from very different horizons, I don’t have my cute plates anymore, but most importantly : there’s no oven!

Well, there wasn’t any stove, for one of my first buys was a teeny tiny electric stove (not even 20 bucks … who can beat that?!). It must be said that asian kitchens aren’t really equiped for stoves : it’s not a very popular cooking method here.

Anyway, all this to tell you that I am still here, and that I very much intend to let you know all about my asian adventures for the next 6 months!

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

And I’ll see you all very soon