VerY MerRY chRIstMAs

For this special day, I was invited to one of our professor's house for dinner. The dinner actually started around three, because we get to help with decorating the ginger bread house, little ginger bread reindeers and ginger bread men. If you had tried the ones in Taiwan, I have to tell you that the ginger bread made in the USA is totally different. It's much more crunchy like cookies and it's sweet, I couldn't even taste the ginger flavor in it. Other then that, it's pretty much the same. The fun of decorating it is the same.


We also get to help with cooking dinner. There was one thing that I learnt today at Dr. Barratt's house, and that was how to cook rice without a ricecooker. It might sound ridiculous, but yeah, I learnt a new way to cook rice from Americans. All you need is put the pot with rice and water on the stove, boil it, occasionally stir it to make sure that it doen't stick at the bottom, turn off the heat and wait a couple of minutes until it's ready to serve. Really interesting.

After dinner, we played Mah Jong together. It was also quite interesting. I wasn't sure about all the details about how to play it, because I always have somebody to help me out, all I've got to do is make sure of my tiles are in the right order and that I'm making bigger chance to win. It's been a while since the last time I played, coz usually we play it during Chinese New Year, and I missed that part last year. As a result, I lost most of the rules of how to put my tiles into order, and I had Dr. Barratt to remind me of how the rule go.

Also, there was one other culture thing that I've learnt from Dr. Barratt. Yesterday when it was kind of late and it was about time to go back to the dormitory, non of the hosts mentioned anything about giving the ride back to the dorm. I waited of quite a long time, and I thought it might be because they wanted their guests to stay as long as they want. The same thing actually happened on Thanksgiving Day for the dinner. So, I said to James and Julie that I didn't want to keep them up so late and that I'm ready to go whenever they are ready. But "oh no, dear, we usually up this late" was what they replied to me. I was rather confused by what they said. Was it because they were showing their politeness, or they still have something fun to do later on that they wanted the guests to join? The answer to this question is that they are being polite. People here, especially when they are the hosts, they do not do anything like getting rid of their guests, asking or implying them to leave. They would just wait until their guests are willing and ready to leave. And when you, as a guest, are ready to go, you may say "it's been a nice evening, and I wouldn't want to disturb you for too long a time" or other reasons that explains why you want to leave. They all work out pretty well here. Nice lesson.

Another nice day of my holidays is all I have to say for my day today.