The (Chinese) New Year started with a bang for me this year. Given that my sister-in-law will be marrying a wonderful Taiwanese friend in just a few short months, I've enjoyed learning more about the Chinese culture lately. To celebrate the new year, we went to Little Szechuan (oh, the sesame chicken! We were out of it so fast!) with our Thursday night small group and Canton House (oh, the sesame balls! I could not believe they were out of them!) when the mom-in-law was in town for wahdding plahnning. Our good friends Matt & Cheryl (and Becky! :) also shared with us some tickets to New Tang Dynasty Television's Chinese New Year Spectacular, which was both beautiful and a lot of fun. I enjoyed sitting next to Cheryl, who is also Taiwanese, as she could translate some for me and explain some of the customs. Good times with family & friends. Xin Nein Kuai Le! Happy New Year!
Unfortunately (as you might guess from the title), the Year of the Pig went downhill from there. The stomach flu descended on me that night and fun times at the Crane house ensued. There's nothing like a little projectile vomit (among other things, ew) to liven up your new year. I haven't been that sick in years. Being in bed all day for 3 days did provide a good time to (re)connect with my own Asian heritage, though. Between bouts of nausea and being passed out like a rock, I re-read Mai Pen Rai Means Nevermind (An American Housewife's Honest Love Affair with the Irrepressible People of Thailand) by Carol Hollinger, a very witty and downright hilarious book that made me yearn all the more to visit Thailand. Although... I identified all-too-well with her skirmishes with "amoebic" (dysentery) and am not sure I could be quite as laissez faire she was about the local water and crops. It does make sense that if you're going to be somewhere for an extended period of time, you might as well get the misery over with and acclimate as soon as possible so you can actually enjoy the culture. I would certainly not want to be the obnoxious, mincing American, scurrying around worrying over disease and pestilence. Perhaps when we go (someday!) I will enjoy the trip like I would while camping. I naturally relax when we go camping, and will tromp through all sorts of spider-infested areas and eat Lord-knows-what that fell Lord-knows-where with cheerful aplomb. Here's hoping.
Anyway, I'm all but back to normal and glad to be back in the swing of things. Happy Year of the Pig, everybody!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Here's the trick about the food: don't think about it; just eat. I firmly believe that our stress over things that are different (and therefore dirty, right?) is what causes our stomachs to freak out the MAJORITY of times overseas.
I have not once gotten sick by eating lettuce or drinking water.
Glad to hear it! I'm impressed. When Christy went to Tajikistan, they had a code to denote how they were doing intestinally... it was either "email" (good, timely & consistent), "snailmail" (slow, not-so-good & inconsistent), or "instant messaging" (not-at-all-good, and very quick!).
Hee hee hee. So I offer to you, my friend, a warm wish of many healthy days of "emails"!
Ew. ;)
Post a Comment