Dear Friend,

	Rice Paddy

The food in Taiwan is really yummy! And I’m still eating all my meals with chopsticks. ;-) But sometimes I have a hard time finishing all the little pieces of rice in my bowl. They’re hard to pick up! I’m slowly getting better at it, though, because we eat rice so often and I’m getting a lot of practice.

Rice is a staple food in the Asian diet. Taiwan’s rainy and humid climate is perfect for growing rice—so perfect that rice is one of Taiwan’s main crops. Farmers in southern Taiwan actually produce three crops of rice every year!

On the days when we head out of the city into the towns surrounding Taipei, we see a lot of rice paddies—fields where farmers grow rice. The fields are flooded with water once the rice plants have started growing. The plants can live in water as long as one-third of the plant is above water. Flooding the paddies helps stop weeds and bugs from destroying the crop.

Your friend,

Carla