It has been almost a month since you’ve been in the U.S. Therefore, I thought I would spend 10 minutes to tell you how I am enjoying your visit so far. The truth is you eat too much even though aunt disagrees. I know you know it. The amount of food you’ve eaten in the past month is the equivalent of more than a month of food for me and my mom.

Nothing is free here, I hope you know this too. If you want something, you must earn it by doing some chores. Mom is still mad that you didn’t put any effort in mowing the lawn. I still find her mumbling sometimes that all you do is eat and never do anything. I agree with her this time.

The only thing you seem to know how to do is cook and eat and you seem to only care about yourself. You pop my fruit mentos like pills. I only eat this to help me stay awake in class and even then, I don’t dare to eat that much. I don’t want to scold you, frankly, that’s not my job. I just want you to know that even a dollar is valuable here. You can save that one or two dollars and spend it on something else later instead of spending on soda and coffee.

You can control your hunger. You’ve been saying I don’t eat because I am trying to lose weight but losing weight or my size has nothing to do with why I don’t need to eat as much. I never said I don’t need to eat either. I don’t need to eat as much because I can control my hunger with my mind. You are only hungry because of the thought of hunger is always on your mind and your stomach is just reacting to the thought. All you have to do is control it and I am asking you to try and this is where I will leave you.

Yinglan Z.