Anyway, the party was wonderful and we had a great time. Our friend whose birthday it was is a single girl living at home with her parents, and the party essentially was her family, a couple aunts and uncles, her best friend and us. Sarah did great and let everyone hold her and really played-up the adorable factor so that everyone was thoroughly in love with her by the time we left. So, yeah, overall the evening was fantastic and really enjoyable, but not without its cultural moments . . .
. . . like when our friend put on a cartoon movie to entertain Sarah and we discovered the main character of said movie was a pile of poop. Dog poop, to be specific. The English translation of the name of the movie in the credits was "Doggy Poo." We are not even kidding about this. However, we discovered at the end of the movie that it was actually produced in Korea and just translated into the local language here, so that kind of lets our part of Asia off the hook for producing childrens' entertainment where the main character is an anthropomorphized pile of feces.
. . . and when we watched the evening news together with our friend's family and the International News section revolved around the leaders of this country's primary allies--i.e. Putin, Hugo Chaves, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Berlusconi. OK, so I don't know if you'd consider Berlusconi an "ally" per se, but it was just hilarious that we watched about 3 minutes of the local news and THESE guys were all featured prominently and positively!
. . . and how the way I dressed Sarah kept coming up as a conversation topic. I put a dress on her, since it was a party and since the temperature was in the 70's that day. Since the local folks tend to dress their kids warmer than we do (understatement) I did add a sweater to her ensemble. Still, I got asked, "Don't you think she's cold?" "Aren't you afraid of her getting a cold?" and my personal favorite, "So you foreigners never put pants on your children?" I really like how Sarah wearing a dress to a party somehow became evidence enough that ALL us foreigners NEVER dress our children in pants but ALWAYS let them go around with just bare legs and socks! Still, it was my own fault. I have lived here long enough to know that I should have dressed her in a snowsuit before I took her to a gathering of local folks, even if it was 70 degrees outside!
. . . also, dinner was a little further outside our realm of comfort than normal. We absolutely LOVE the food here generally, but you have a lot more control when you order at a restaurant than when you eat in someone's home. There were actually several really good dishes, like some delicious marinated chicken legs, stir-fried lima beans, and some really good Eight Treasure Rice for dessert. There was also some Bitter Melon, which neither David nor I touched. It really is terribly bitter, but the people here are convinced its absolutely essential for good health. Thankfully, our hosts said up front they didn't expect us to eat it, which was very considerate! The main special dish they served, since it was a birthday, though, was shrimp. My standards for shrimp are pretty high--I won't even eat it in the U.S. unless its "de-veined," I am totally incapable of doing the peel-and-eat thing. Well, here they take shrimp to a whole different level and serve it totally whole and you are expected to eat everything except the head and the tail, including the legs and shell and all that!! Thankfully, David can totally do this (isn't he amazing??? Swoon.), so we foreigners didn't look like total jerks not eating the main fancy dish of the meal!
Something that has spread from OUR culture, however, is the tradition of birthday cakes! At the end of the evening, our friend's parents unveiled this beautiful cake that also ended up being delicious. It was yellow cake with a berry filling and berry flavored icing, with white chocolate accents. Yum!
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