Fireworks

Last night was the Lantern Festival, the last night of Spring Festival. I'm getting ready for work--got to teach those fresh young minds, right?-- but I'm so groggy and cranky that I almost pity my students (all 95 or so.) You see, the fireworks lasted until 2 a.m. or thereabouts, with the random string of firecrackers going off intermittently until dawn. The dogs flatly refused to go outside--one peed on the carpet by the front door and I couldn't blame him--and now, cranky and tired and out of sorts, I go to school to find out if my schedule changed, what classes I teach, and oh, yes, incidentally, to pick up brand-new textbooks where I will be expected to fill out a semester's worth of lesson plans before noon while simultaneously teaching 3 or 4 groups of  up to 32 kids.

The Chinese teachers, who teach smaller classes, averaging only 5 classes PER WEEK to the foreign teacher's 26, have known for three weeks what their schedule is, what their texts are, and will have until April to file their lesson plans. Can you understand my grumpiness? I could have a whole new lot of students--new texts (never with the Teacher's Edition or Answer Keys so I have to do every damn page myself to provide a Key for students)--and the stress of an impossible deadline. Oh, I'll give you a semester-long teaching plan all right: just don't expect it to be remotely accurate.

A ton of new China hands quit this Spring Festival--one school I know had four out of five quit--and my email inbox is filled with requests begging me to teach. Funny thing though--desperate as they are to hire, the Chinese schools are offering these replacement teachers only HALF the salary per month as the other foreign teachers! Bit of pocket lining going on, eh? Many people see confusion and disaster as a gold mine for making a bit on the side, both here and in whatever country you come from: Management will be so glad to have those teaching posts filled that they won't question why half the salary is being paid in cash to a Chinese teacher. It's not my business and yet...if you are a new hire, beware.

Lanterns Ho!

It's the Lantern Festival, the last night of the two week Chinese New Year celebration, which means up here in Beijing there will be zero lanterns but several million fireworks, firecrackers, and drunks mistakenly shooting off their thumbs. I am up very early, getting ready to trek across town with two sets of gifts for the Mas, the elderly couple who have been my close friends and surrogate grandparents to Lulu for the past thirteen years. He's crippled and she's battling a serious and fatal disease. It makes me very sad to think that they're in decline, and that the most I can do is show up on an auspicious day with a gift in my hands. At the same time my dear old friend Jane is ill---TB---and while we can't work out the legalities of my taking her son into my home right now, it looks like I've acquired a six-year-old son for the summer. So I guess this holiday period really is my first and last vacation for quite some time...Lulu and her friend will be in town all summer as well (yay, free babysitting) and as I recall there is very little rest with a six-year-old around.

Back to Lantern Festival. It's a bigger deal in other areas and some cities will have parades, where people have beautiful and fanciful lanterns in fantastic shapes, make of bamboo and paper and lighted with real candles. Many Beijingers, not being into the aesthetics so much, will settle for buying a kid a cheap plastic mass-produced toy (usually one which has the "benefit" of an electronic squeaker or siren as well to make it "more fun") which breaks after five minutes. This may take the form of a fat baby in a red diaper atop a fish, or a string of firecrackers, or a drum. In my compound--filled with wannabe Yuppies--the few children who are here are being raised by grandparents who are torn between giving the grandchild--the family God--whatever they want, and not wasting money on foolishness. Most of them did not have lanterns in childhood--too non-PC, not able to afford it, etc---and they'll just stay at home tonight and watch TV (free) and scold their grandkids for not evidencing signs of genius yet. The parents? Just getting back to their corporate-sponsored luxury apartments in downtown Beijing, fresh from that trip to San Ya at the company expense. Did I mention that most kids here--at least half--are raised only by grandparents? And that these grandparents didn't raise their own kids, and are fairly clueless? It makes for an interesting sight.

I've always wanted to attend a Lantern Festival parade but when I'm in a part of China that really celebrates it, something always happens, such as a drop-in guest who thinks it's a waste of time and just wants to practice Oral English ("My ear is wicked!") or rather spectacularly, a wash of vomit from Lulu from the time she had appendicitis. I am content to see pictures for now. I will get to a real Lantern Festival celebration some day, I'm sure--hell, next year I should throw a party and make my own --- but tonight, it's me, the pile of homework I have to whittle down, and two little dogs refusing to come out from under the bed until the damn firecrackers stop. (Good luck with that one.) 

A Backwards Shag is a Just a Hop

I was dining with my older-but-wiser Southern Belle friend. She's not only smart, and tough, and funny, but she's a psychologist too (which can be a pain in the ass sometimes if you're being highly passive aggressive, but think about it--nice to have a good knock to the head when you need it, eh?) Knowing her is like having Her Royal Highness Jill Conner Browne the Boss Sweet Potato Queenin your pocket. For the record, I am a Queen myself but my chapter membership has dwindled down to one, as everyone moved away or got too busy at work to have fun, but I will survive.

Anyhoo, two things came up during our lunch: First, I have never slow-danced. Never. Not even though Chuck Mangione's "Last Dance" put me into a depressive funk when I was 14 from which I have never quite emerged, and not even when I actually had a boyfriend. Come to think of it, only gay boys dance with me --even my husband wouldn't dance with me at our wedding but hie'd himself off to some Titty Pit, still clad in his wedding bib and tucker---and gay boys seldom slow dance with the ladies. I didn't go to any high school dances and I certainly was not invited to the Prom (and yet, I was cute, go figure.) I worked my way through college, so there were no dances there, and none of my friends had dancing at their weddings. Or if they did, they were not the slow-dance numbers. So there--I have never had the experience of slow dancing, with or without a stiffy pressed into my thighs. It was suggested at lunch that while I do indeed have some of what the Sweet Potato Queens label as The Five Men You Must Have In Your Life At All Times, I do not have Someone to Dance With. Even the Someone To Have Great Sex With--who doubles as The Man I Can Talk to--does not dance with me, and I am sure if I asked him to slow dance with me to get me over some developmental hurdle I should have passed at sixteen (but didn't) he'd probably give me the same shocked look he gave me once when I said rather drunkenly I had cramps and could we please cuddle.

Second: I love dancing, and I'm ticked off I don't dance anymore. I've substituted snide comments and lonely posts for joyous movement, and I will start going to Swing Club this month, no matter the potential humiliation (I don't know any steps) or potential damage to my fragile knees. Southern Belle Friend (let's call her SBF) was big into dancing in her hey day--which was the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and early 90's, but she's not dancing much these days. While I encouraged her to join one of the Swing Dance Clubs here, she waved her hand in dismissal, then started on a discussion of the regional dances of the American South.

For one thing, she's a Shagger. The Shag is fairly localized to South and North Carolina (according to SBF.) It's not too fast, not too slow. However, SBF related one story about the Shag which I found really interesting. Apparently when she moved to Birmingham, she tried to dance at some of the local clubs. Somehow her steps just didn't mesh: her male partner would be ready to twirl her and she'd be in the middle of some complicated step. She'd be ready to twirl and her partner would be swinging in the opposite direction. Finally someone told her that back in the 50's, some man from Birmingham went to North Carolina, learned to dance The Shag, and brought it back to Birmingham where he taught it widely. However, he got the steps backwards, and taught it in reverse--and the shag, backwards, is really just a Hop.

I sat open mouthed during this recitation--oh, linguistic minefield! The two Brits at the next table glared at me as I chortled, "You mean a backwards Shag is just a Hop?" Of course you can read more into this--how Western courtship rituals don't mesh with Beijing ones, how out of step we are, etc, but what I took away more than anything from this conversation, as well as my disastrous Karaoke Date Night (where friends rescued me, thank GOD) is that you have to dance with a crowd whose steps fit your own, if you really want to swing.

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's...

So, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and as you are all aware, I do not have a boyfriend. This being the case, a co-worker at Mysterious Job Number Two questioned why I was happy about it being St. V's day, and why this would prompt me to bake peppermint brownies. (Recipe to follow.)

First of all, he's not getting any (brownies, that is.) Don't question my traditions. I like to bake, I have to work, it's a holiday, and I have to use up the Hershey Candy Cane Christmas Kisses  soon, before I remember they're in the house and start devouring them. Second of all, what is more soothing to the soul than the smell of baking chocolate? I don't actually enjoy eating brownies as much as I enjoy smelling and making them. Right now my neighbors are pea-green with envy from the delectable smells arising from my microwave. They've been poos, and I won't give them any, either. One I will cut and wrap up for my pregnant friend Coco (it's for her little Cocoa Bean, as I have dubbed the unborn one) and the rest go to work, where I will fling them on a table prior to sitting down to my Mysterious Job Number Two. With luck, they will be eaten quickly without any asshole comments (such as, "I didn't know they'd be sweet" or "What mix is this?" or "Do these have, like, chocolate in them? Because I'm like totally allergic.") but I'm not holding my breath.

I dined on deep-fried bits of meat done by Ayi, left thoughtfully on  plate covered by a bowl in the kitchen, just for me. I wasn't really hungry, but if I don't eat up what Ayi leaves for me the day she leaves it, she will feed it to the dogs for breakfast. (Revenge, thy name is  Passive Agressive Women .) BTW, if you make breaded pork cutlets, you completely change the experince by throwing in some toasted cumin seed into the breading. Really changes things up. I like nice plain food on occasion---potato pancakes with sour cream and applesauce, for example, and lately I've been craving Ranch Dressing. The pork cutlets with cumin, however, sort of jolted me out of this and into a different palate of taste.

Brownies: These microwave BEAUTIFULLY. Melt 9 tablespoons of butter (half-cup plus one tablespoon). You can nuke it or do in on the stove top, but whatever you do, you must let it get back to room temperature before you mix in other ingredients. Otherwise, as wiser women than I have noted, your brownies will be very heavy and kind of dry. Since you're nuking these, and it's awfully easy to dry out anything being nuked, err on the side of caution and leave the stuff strictly alone for at least ten minutes. Go do your nails or something while it's cooling off. (This also gives any toast crumbs that may have accidentally been scooped into the pan a chance to settle, so you can fish them out.) Don't use bacon grease or olive oil. Bacon, which is actually delightful with chocolate, does not enliven baked goods (although it's a marvel on a Maple Bar.) Olive oil and chocolate--not a good combo either. If you have to go cholesterol-free, just don't bother with this recipe and make yourself some hot fudge (zero fat, if you use skim milk) and pour it on some fat-free ice milk and be happy.

When you return, stir in a cup and a half of white sugar, three eggs, a generous dollop of vanilla (at least a teaspoon, but not a tablespoon) and a pinch of salt. If you have the time and patience, you can then beat the shit out of this until it's light and fluffy and glossy and pours like a ribbon, which will ensure brownies with a lovely  meringue-like top. If you're me, you say the hell with it as you don't even have a proper wooden spoon anymore (thank you, Blessed Herbs Colon Cleanse) or some big-ass fancy mixer and so you just mix it up until it's fairly smooth and no yucky yellow lumps are showing. Now add 9 tablespoons of cocoa (that's a half-cup plus one tablespoon)   and stir in 12 tablespoons of flour, which is 3/4 of a cup or a half-cup plus a quarter cup or a half-cup plus four tablespoons (I spell this out as some of the women in my family are not really good at maths.) Gentle fold this in--do not beat--and as soon as it's more-or-less incorporated, pour it into a greased  and floured ( or cocoa'd) microwaveable pan--8 by 8 inches is good, but a round pie pan made of Pyrex is even better, as you can slice it into pie wedges when finished. Regardless, spread it in the pan, then sprinkle a bunch of cut-up Hershey Candy Cane Christmas Kisses  on top: sort of squish them in a bit so they're not all at the very top. Nuke on high power for six minutes, then check: done? Still squishy? Try another minute. Then another. Keep going until it's more or less set in the middle. There will indeed be some slightly wet places when you pull it out but these will dry up a few minutes out of the oven, because it's still cooking a bit. If you have used Pyrex (and I HEART THE STUFF!) the glass will retain quite a bit of heat and give your brownies a more finished appearance. Truthfully, you should let the stuff cool before attacking it. I mentioned earlier that I don't really like to eat brownies--I get a sugar rush, then I get cranky, and then I need a nap which is filled with my recurring dream of speeding along back country roads in search of a house I can call my own...I've had this dream so often that I know which road to take to go to which house and yet I somehow never get inside any of the houses...

These brownies are plain, simple, good, and can be dolled up a number of ways, such as using brown sugar and rum (instead of the vanilla), adding nuts, adding dollops of peanut butter, using a different liquor in place of the vanilla, using crushed-up peppermint sticks, adding a tablespoon of espresso powder, mint chocolate chips, plain semi-sweet chips, peanut butter chips, ad nauseum. They're the sub to a dominatrix dessert menu: they seem sweet and submissive but when all is said and done, they're really just there to make you their bitch. (That's probably why I don't eat them: I may empower someone, but I don't like to relinquish it.) (And that probably explains why I don't have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day.)

Happy Saint Valentine's Day to all of you: may you remember with gratitude and not a small amount of surprise how many people truly love you, warts and all.

Beijing and Cars

More than 30,000 new cars hit the road here every month in this city, each a dangerous weapon in the hand of a newly-licensed driver.  A friend's girlfriend gave me a lift home the other night and he and I screamed in terror about six times on the way home: the girlfriend shrugged off each near-accident and sped on, seeming unable to learn that accelerating and forcing someone off the road in a game of what amounted to "Chicken" was perhaps not the best way to stay accident-free (let alone alive.) This was BEFORE the snow hit: I can only imagine the little vixen gunning her engine and trying to stop on a kuai in the slush.

Most people drive as if this is the first day of Driver's Ed. I often see new drivers backing over fences, hitting small shrubs or trees, or racing through red lights. The attitude seems to be "I am invincible because I can afford a car." Most cannot back up, a fact the small fences in my compound attest to plainly. Children remain unrestrained: there are no car seats, and most don't even wear seat belts. I saw this on a morning walk: Dad drove, cigarette in mouth, while toddler son sat on his lap, hands on steering wheel. Older child--perhaps five--hung out the window with a glass bottle of Coke (hard to find here) and a stick lollipop in his mouth. Dad let toddler steer, which meant an impact with a delivery man's bicycle. It is his livelihood, I might add. Dad inspects the damage to his car, swears a blue streak at the delivery man for putting a dent in his car,  then gets back with toddler hanging off the back of his neck now--and drives off. Delivery man tries not to cry as he inspects his ruined bike. Crowd rumbles disapprovingly but the car apparently had some special license plate and no one wants to get involved. Older child vomits out the window, perhaps a result of the Coke bottle and lollipop working in tandem,  a move which garners much interest from the crowd. Suddenly Britney doesn't look so bad.

I Hate Jiaozi

You call them wontons: I call them jiaozi, and I don't care if they're boiled, frozen, freshly made or stir-fried (aka "potstickers") I hate them.

When I was a newbie here, I was invited to people's homes for dinner a lot. It was incredibly sweet, especially as nobody had a whole lot of anything back then. It's harder then hell to cook a lot when all you have is a single gas-burner, and I do deeply appreciate the effort people put into the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and supervision of dumb white guests. However, and this is a big however, sometime around 1995, someone decided the proper food for dumb white guests was jiaozi, and the entertainment for the evening should be making jiaozi.

So picture this: you're invited to dinner, and you get there, and you find everyone grinning like apes. Why? Because you have to help make dinner. They wheel out a barrel of flour. For the first time ever, you notice flat uncluttered surfaces in  a Chinese house. And then the hideous process begins: someone begins to mix flour with warm water and the stretching, pounding, roping and strippling begins. That's just to make the dough. The protein in the flour has to be developed into ropey gluten so the dough can be stretched. Ugh. This is a long long process and if you offer to help---being a hell of a great strudel maker--everyone will laugh at you and tell you how YOU don't know ANYTHING about jiaozi.

This is pretty much the crux of the matter. Even if you shoot pasta out your ass without trying, everone will assure you that you don't know squat. So you sit through the tedious process of beating the tar out of the dough. Then you sit through the resting period. Someone brings you a cup of tea. You're famished, and consider eating the cup. While this is happening, you hope for snacks: alas, none, as no one wants to take the edge off that first bite of jiaozi goodness. You'd think someone would take this opportunity to mix up the filling and let the flavors blend a bit but no, everyone sits around and stares at you, the pet foreigner. Pictures may be taken. Someone whom you have never seen before may come over for their promised English lesson. Oh, didn't the host tell you? He's studying for an important exam and you are going to teach him what he needs to know for the test. You've never heard of the test and in your coversation with the student you discover that if he passes this test, he's going to the UK as a lecturer in economics, and yet his English is on the "I am happy meet you Dear Friend" level. If that. At one point he refers to Milton as a "bourgeous proletariat revolutionary" and you try not to bean him with your empty cup. Very empty cup. So now you're hungry AND thirsty. Can it get worse?

But wait, it does. They are now pinching out bits of dough, then rolling them with little rolling pins that look like fat cigars. The rolling pins are dandy and might do well for that pie you were thinking of baking--mmmm, pie---but then you discover, as they roll on, and on, and on, that they intend to make over 2,000 jiaozi that very night, so they have PLENTY to give to visitors during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and that every last one will be filled, stuffed, folded, and sealed shut that very evening before the first go into the pot to be cooked.

You wait, drooling, while 2,000 tiny wonton wrappers are rolled out before your eyes. Then the host comments on how he needs to put on his coat and buy the meat for the filling. "It's better fresh," he tells you as he heads out the door. So now you wait while the host tries to find an open butcher shop---it's now about a quarter past eight--and you wait, and wait, and wait, until he returns, triumphant, a sack of ground meat in his hand. Oh god, it's pork, and you are about to have pork-and-ginger jiaozi. The pork is dumped into a big wooden bowl. Ingredients--chopped ginger, and a LOT of salt--are tipped in. Now the humiliation begins. Before you can say "trichinosis" someone hands you a circle of dough, a teaspoon with raw pork, and instructs you to fold the dumpling up exactly the way they did. Having grown up with Czech great-aunts who taught you a thing or two about noodles, you make a respectable little dumpling. Everyone stares at you as if you just took dump in the jiaozi mix then bursts into laughter. Your dumpling is passed around so they can see HOW STUPID you are, you can't even fold a jiaozi! You notice, however, that EVERYONE'S jiaozi are folded in different ways but you keep silent as you think at this point if you talk you'll kill someone. Your feeble attempts at making jiaozi are put to the side, as they wouldn't want to hurt a real guest's feelings by serving them defective jiaozi. Someone seeing your disconsolate face (really, it's just hunger) tells you to cheer up because "Your bad jiaozi will open up and spill the content so no good for guests, you know we will cook them just for you and you eat and you will know what is good jiaozi." You want to say screw you all but can't, because it's not good manners and these people DID invite you over, even if they wrested a damn English lesson out of you, not to mention a photo op...You look up and notice with dismay that several of the family members are taking pictures of themselves wearing your discarded coat: they are showing how slim they are, and how they can wrap the coat around themselves with room to spare. My, so now they're mocking your clothes, your tastes, and the size of your ass. Fortunately, you are too weak with hunger to pick up a stool and brain Lao Tai Tai, the grandmother of the group who is showing that she can wrap your coat around herself twice, so you stay where you are and fold, fold, fold, even though each dumpling--lovely to your eye, firm, even, well-packed--gives rise to much merriment at your expense. But it's ok, as foreigners don't have feelings and don't mind being mocked as they are too stupid to know what is subtle.

Finally, someone thinks to put the pots on to boil, and two batches go in: theirs, the supposedly "pefect" jiaozi, and yours, the defects. They rise to the surface and the smell is, well, awful, as you loathe pork and ginger but know you can't leave until the meal is over, at which time everyone will charge to the door en masse. You'd also like to pee, but it's your first time in this home and it's kind of bad manners to use the toilet the first time in...it's warm, which is nice, but only from the steam and the amount of people packed in a tiny space. The smell of unwashed bits, damp wool, and Chinese herbal remedies is almost, but not quite, obscured by the smell of ripe boiled pork.

Finally, FINALLY, with much fanfare, the dumplings are fished out and ladled into bowls. Different types of vinegar are offered, black Chunking vinegar which you love but makes you vomit, millet vinegar from Shaanxi, which is your personal favorite, rice vinegar from the South. There are other condiments--a dish of picked peppers, for example, but you douse your dumplings in millet vinegar and then you notice something. Your dumplings are perfect: each one has held together perfectly, while the others--well, hee hee hee, most have split open and vomited their contents into the boiling broth. The dumpling which had a little coin inserted into it---like a Three Kings Cake only largely inedible--has split as well and the coin is nowhere to be found. Hee hee hee. The guests mutter among themselves as they fish through the broth trying to find the meat and ginger filling: without it, they're mostly sucking down limp noodle casing. It is a dim triumph, because you, sadly, now have stuffed dumplings, plump and proud, each filled with a mixture of chopped ginger, ground pork, and a not insignificant amount of chopped bone, gristle, and tendon. What can I say--the quality of meat back then was suspect at best, and hungry people eat what they can get. You are gagging each one down, partly out of hunger, and partly out of manners. You offer some of your plump beauties to other guests who shudder at their ugliness. Why? Why are they considered so ugly? They are symmetrical, nicely folded and crimped, and they didn't fucking fall apart while boiled. Why are they considered so horrible?

The answer is clear: because you,  a foreigner, made them.

When the meal is over, the guests charge out the door. By the time you get back to your building, the front gate is locked. You manage to alert the sleeping security guard and he lets you in, but the elevator is locked, as the person who is allowed to run it has gone to bed at 11. You walk up 12 flights of stairs and fling yourself down on your bed, noticing as you do so that it's almost two a.m. and worse, you're still hungry. The next day in Chinese class you will yawn, a lot, and your stupid foreigner advisor will scold you for not having done your homework and tell you that you should, for the sake of your Chinese, hang out with the locals more often.

If The Chinese Practice Gender-Based Infanticide, Why Are There Still So Many People at Carrefour's?

I just realized it's probably not a good idea to put "kill" and "girl babies" in the same sentence, particularly on what my mother calls "that internet thingy,"  so I just amended the title. Here's the deal: I keep meeting up with ignorant people who say things like, "Oh, here in China they just kill all the girl babies," oblivious of the fact that their hamburger at Hard Rock Cafe has been delivered by a female waitperson (Chinese.) So, if all the girl babies are killed, how come there are still people of all ages living in the nation? Why isn't it a nation of sad and largely gay men, then, huh? If there is zero population growth--indeed, negative growth rate--and all the girl babies are always getting clubbed like baby seals in a Greenpeace video, who is giving birth to all the new babies?

I just wish people would shut up sometimes and open their eyes always. I am seriously offended by posts from people alleging to be Christians who write things like, "Been here ten days and finally found evidence that Jesus lives! Yes, Jesus is here in Beijing but it took us more than a week to find Him." Uh--isn't He in your heart? What do you mean, you found Him? Was He missing? You found a picture of Him? What, you just noticed that there was a church across the street from your hotel? Or you noticed your cab driver had a cross around his neck and that is why he (and I quote) "treated us real good."  There's an expression here which I like a lot, which is "People come to China either to lose themselves or save someone else." That pretty well sums up the experience--a trip to reckless hedonism where any man, no matter how reprehensible, can get a fairly normal-looking woman (hint: it's a combination of beer, cash, and a place called Maggie's) or here to "save" people by making them "Chrustun" or worse, "teaching" them English.

I have been here lo, many many years, most of my adult life, and I will continue to be here where I earn sufficient cash to keep my daughter in her expensive private university. I came here because I was safer here from my crazy abusive ex than I was in the US, where the law had a peculiar "let it roll" attitude where child safety was concerned.  (As my attorney said, "I can't do anything until he actually dips her in boiling oil, and even then, after he served his sentence, he'd still get to see her." ) I figured that being under constant surveillance I'd be safer, and I was right, plus the added bonus of Ex having to put in a lot more effort to mess with me, ensured minimal contact. Safe, but not particularly lolling about enjoying the sweet life. I don't envy those people who come here and find what they're looking for, whether it's double-jointed loose women or fame on local TV stations. Good on them: I find I like the hedonists far more than I like the missionaries, with the attitude of  "I'm gonna learn 'em ta be Amurrican and love Jesus!"

While the hedonists aren't necessarily learning a lot of Chinese, at least they are receptive to some new experiences, whether they're threesomes or jelly fish on a stick. The missionaries, however...well, to be fair, two of my closest friends are missionaries but they are the more laid-back variety, as respectful and willing to see the Divine in everyone and in every belief, as I could wish for. The others...well, suffice to say, come Christmas I have witnessed breakdowns by big white ladies in Jenny Lou's who began screaming hysterically because they couldn't make a birthday cake for Jesus if the fucking Betty Crocker was sold out. Whoever heard of a birthday cake for Jesus made from the crappy Australian Green cake mix? (I didn't realize that loving the Lord meant never serving Him organic produce.) Yeah, as I noted before, we all have the occasional freak out, and this could have been one of them, but I do notice a tendency in the missionary crowd--particularly the missionary Embassy crowd-- to be very "let's pretend we're still in the US."

True: I knew a missionary family that had Astro-turf covering their patio so they could pretend it was grass. Mom had grown up in Taiwan but did not know a single word of Chinese. The boys, born and raised in China, did not know any Chinese. Dad had a Ph. D, spoke fluent Chinese, but was content to be the translator/mouthpiece for the family as he was, after all, the spiritual head of the home. I showed Mom Jenny Lou's and she fell to her knees praising Jesus for the stock of Cream of Mushroom soup. (I wish I were kidding.) It was sweet to see someone so openly thankful--yes, I do say Grace in public myself on occasion--but somehow seeing this woman nigh-on genuflect to Campbell soup made me a tad uncomfortable. Thou shalt have no false gods before me...not even if they're Mmm mmm good!

I think when you leave your home land, what you're really doing  (if you're at all open and in tune to the possibility that some of your assumptions might actually be incorrect) is discovering yourself. If you come over to impose yourself, your standards, your thinking, on someone else, you're not learning. This is my argument with the missionaries. I love the ones who are here to learn, to help, to seek true communion and brotherhood, and it's been a real privilege to know and love them. (How I love it when I have LDS neighbors! I can also point out two Baptist missionaries who are extraordinarily fine people.) The rest, however...bless 'em and their cans of soup and with luck someday it will dawn on them that if ALL the girl babies are exterminated, how come it's so damn crowded at Carrefour?

Almost a Post-Script. There's another saying: When the footprints on the toilet seat are yours, it's time to go home. Amen to that one!