First, a word of warning. If ever you are in the situation where you are inviting a couple of non-english speakers to dinner, I would say, pepper the party with people who DO speak engligh, and a lot of it. That is my little piece of humble advice.
Last evening Bryan and I hosted the Chinese defence attache and his wife for dinner at Bryan's residence. Now, I have to say I was mislead a little in believeing that his wife spoke a bit of english. She spoke none. Well. I suppose "Hello" and "Yes" and "Thank-you", but I can say that in about 10 languages, so it doesn't count. And not like it didn't look like she was trying, but I bet she had an easier go at dinner than Bryan and I who played "cross cultural non-sequiter" (as Bryan put it) with her husband.
It went a little something like this.
Us - "These are my favorite appetizers"
Him - "Yes, I play tennis, I learned from a book"
Us - "Oh. It's good exersise yes?"
Him - "Because Chinese staff live on compound, we get together a lot to cook and drink".
Needless to say, it kept us on our toes. But when you go from speaking about marathons to the system of ranking chinese officials in one giant leap.. You can't decide if you need another glass of wine or if you've already had too many.
My personal source of entertainment (and I'm pretty sure Bryan would second me here) was actually the food. You are all aware of Amit, the strange cook that Bryan employs. Well, he gets really excited when he gets to entertain, and now that Bryan has let him know that four meat dishes and some broccoli does not a dinner make; he's had to find some other ways to express his culinary creativity. Namely by garnishing the food, or creating one off wonders like the tuna casserole that I've heard about.
Last night, it was the mashed potatoes. It was all I could do to kick Bryan under the table and hide my smile behind my napkin when Amit unveils the crockery dish of mashed potatoes with a giant tomato rose in the middle, and toast stuck precariously in all sides of the dish. Toast. Would you maybe like some starch with your starch? Although, when he did bring out dessert, (two types of apple pie.. one that had this strange nuclear green tint about it, individually plated for us with a slice of ice-cream.. ) I did have to chuckle. What did he think? "Well, if they don't eat the failed green slice that looks like it came overnight from Chernobyl, then I'm sure they'll enjoy the one baked in a cupcake tin that doesn't resemble anything close to apple pie. Yes. "
Now, as classy as I am, (no really boys, sit down, stop laughing) near the end of the night I was beside myself with thinking of a nice warm bed to crawl into and forget all about Chinese-American-Canadian relations and funny apple pie. But not before I got something stuck in my tooth and decided to excavate with my tongue, forgetting my mouth was full of tea. At that point in the night, my motor skills and mouth/brain coordination was misfiring at a rapid rate. Luckily, when I spurted tea all over myself with a noise vaguely resembling a wet fart, it was in the middle of a particularily humerous story about how a Chinese army commander decided to surrender Beijng. Good lord. Next time I'll just hold back until they're talking about the dead Pope.
But, we did it. We made it through the evening, tea stained and full of apple pie(s). I'm not entirely sure how we did it, perhaps the Chinese are thinking the same thing this morning. But heck, if we can make it through the Chinese.. I say lets have the Russians next week. At least they'll appreciate the potatoes...
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