I had a brand new cultural experience today. My friend Liz and her mom were in town. (Liz is a member of my young clergy group and her mom showed up after our retreat. They then spent the last week in Northern California.) So they came into the city on their way out of town tomorrow. They are from Texas and one of Liz's requests was that we go somewhere that they couldn't go in Cameron, Texas. (Very easy request.) So we went to get dim sum. We went to a dim sum restaurant I had never been to, Koi Palace. The dim sum restaurants I have been to are relatively quiet places. However, that was not the case with Koi Palace. It was very noisy. The wait staff were definitely all at least Chinese American if not just plain Chinese. So when they would come to the table to offer us a dumpling I could not understand anything that they were saying. They could have been speaking Chinese or there accent was still just so think that it sounded like Chinese. So they would just come to the table and I would take a look and then usually say no thank you. I often would ask them to repeat it as if somehow repetition would make it better. It did not. Finally, what I think was our waiter came and suggested some things for us on a little selection menu. But his english wasn't much better so it was still a little bit of a surprise of what came to the table. He also didn't take the menu with him so I wasn't sure he was even going to remember. And for all I know he didn't, he just had stuff delivered to our table. It was all delicious. By the end of our meal I was at least able to understand one woman say tofu. They definitely couldn't find that in Cameron, Texas.
As I'm writing this I realize I had a similar experience tonight. On my way to get a massage I stopped at a local French bistro, L'ptit Laurent. My friend Laine asked me to pick up a gift certificate for a friend of theirs. They greeted me with bonjour and spoke a lot of french even in response to my questions in English. I understood bonjour and wui. Then he walked off for a moment and one of the waitresses began speaking to me. I'm guessing she said "can I help you?" And I'm hoping that is what she asked because I said no thanks I'm already being helped. My conversational French class I took 2 years ago didn't help me much with the speed with which she was speaking. But I was able to say merci when I left.
While the language barriers made me a little uncomfortable, still seriously, I love this city.
Au voir
(I'm guessing I spelled very little correctly)
2 comments:
I was about to ask what your third language was today, but then I realized it would be English. Although I thought at the beginning of your story that you were going to count Texan as a separate language!
Merci pour me faire rire, comme toujours.
Au revoir,
Ellen
Gracias para tus palabras hermositas. Sonriso. Adios. KT
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