Hunan

"Today we traveled to our daughter’s province.

Since we have only one picture from the day (a view of the night lights we see from our 30th floor hotel window), we thought we’d relate some of our “cultural adventures.”

Our plane was delayed an hour so everyone who was waiting to board was given a free meal to tide them over until we were fed breakfast on the plane. We were given a little juice box, two French bread buns, and two packets of unidentifiable goodies. Always game for trying new foods, I, Wendy, dug into the first packet. Bite number one.

Steve asks, “So? What is it?”

“Not sure yet,” I replied, slightly baffled by my chewy mouthful.

“Is it good?”

“Not particularly.”

Bite number two. Pickled. Definitely pickled. Something in my brain registers and bite number three confirms it when I hit yolk. Egg.

Steve opts for the French bread instead, but quickly realizes that the French who visited China must have had a different family recipe than the one they handed down to the Americans.

Drink. I definitely need to wash down the pickled egg with a drink of juice. Insert straw. Big slurp. Oh! Of course! How could I have imagined that the Chinese writing on the front of the juice box said apple juice when it clearly said “soy milk”? Ah well. We’re still up to digging into packet number three. Pickled green beans. Not bad, actually.

Dinner on the other hand was delicious. We had a spicy beef with onions, rice, and dumplings. Tasty. We didn’t make too much of a mess using the chopsticks, and we enjoyed the meal, all-in-all. But after about 10 little cups of black tea which the waitress continued to pour for us, we still didn’t have our bill and we appeared, I’m sure, as quite the lame Americans when we tried to communicate our question of “Where do we pay the bill?” One after another, the employees, stumped by our question, sent another to try to decipher our English, only to ultimately leave us alone in our center-of-the-restaurant seats, until another employee would give it a go. Using sign language, we finally managed to get our point across, they brought us the bill and we left our tip. The waitress called after us, handed us our tip money and said “No. No.” Steve said, slowly, pointing to himself, “Oh, I’m sorry, we’re Americans,” at which point he was going to continue by explaining that we always leave tips on the table, since it seemed clear to him that we’d committed some faux pas. Of course, the waitress had no idea what he was trying to say, and even if she did, I’m sure she’d wonder why on earth Steve felt the need to explain that we’re Americans since we clearly stick out like a sore thumb. After a night of stifled laughter I knew, at that point, that we better get out of the restaurant quickly because I wasn’t going to be able to hold it back much longer. Safely in the elevator we had a hearty laugh.

So, what’s Hope going to think of these two goofs who can barely hold their chopsticks, order from a menu, and communicate a clear thought? We’ll find out when we meet her tomorrow at 3:15 p.m. (Monday morning at 12:15 a.m. California time)."

For now (and for Mom and Dad),

Casey