Not Just A Tourist: China at Home

Last year in China, there was a lady named Kelly who was hired by ILP and the school to take care of us, keep us on schedule, help us figure out how to get around town, and that type of thing. I became friends with her while there, and I still talk to her sometimes. I was talking to her a few weeks ago and she said she was visiting California on vacation soon, and I told her that I live in California. It turned out that they were flying into LAX so not terribly far from my house. So on Tuesday night, Kelly, her husband, and two of their friends came and spent the night at my house! After we had it all planned out that she and Gaung Gaung (her husband) would come, she said "oh and two other teachers will come too, that's ok right??" Haha, such a Chinese thing to do. Plan it all out, than throw extra stuff in there. But of course it was totally fine! My brothers are at EFY this week so we had extra beds- it worked our perfectly!
In China, everyone lives in apartments and there are hardly any houses. Only super duper rich people own houses so when they got to my house, they didn't think someone they knew could actually live there. They were nervous to knock so they stood outside yelling "Laa-keen! La-keen!" super loudly until I realized it was them. They loved the tour of my house and they were so excited to see a real American house, they just went around touching everything and walked around asking questions. It reminded me of when I was in China and wanted to know everything about everything!! I had forgotten how different Chinese and American houses are . We're all just people but even the structure of houses is different depending on where you live. Kelly was the only one who spoke English out of the group, so she would translate for the other three when they had questions about stuff. They had never seen a dishwasher or a clothes dryer before, they had only heard stories about them. When I showed them how they worked, they were in awe! They were so excited to help me load the dishwasher after dinner because they couldn't believe you could put dirty dishes in it and they would come out clean. They also loved looking in our fridge, freezer, pantry, and spice cupboard because Chinese have smaller fridges and fewer spices. Ming, Kelly's friend, loves to cook so she was excited to look at how people in America cook. She helped us chop the onions and peppers for dinner and I have never seen vegetables cut so beautifully!
We made breakfast burritos for dinner all together and it was super fun! Cooking together is a big part of Chinese culture (because of foods like dumplings) so it was a great bonding experience with our new friends. Even though we couldn't talk very much because of the language barrier, it was neat to see how close you can grow with people just by working together. For breakfast we had French toast, sausage, and cereal. They had never had French toast before-it was fun to teach them how Americans eat it! They also mixed hot water, milk, hot chocolate mix, and cereal all together and ate it… It was very unique haha. But if you think about it, most of the foods we eat in America are really weird to the Chinese.
A neat thing that happened was we were able to say a prayer with them before we ate dinner. I don't even think we would be allowed to do that if we were in China because any form of proselyting is illegal there. The next morning we had already started eating breakfast when Kelly said "Wait no! We haven't prayed yet, don't we need to do that??" So my mom said a really nice prayer thanking God that they could visit, and afterwords Kelly translated the prayer for everyone and they started to discuss it. Then Kelly told us they realized that to us, having them there as guests was a direct blessing from our God and we were really grateful to him for allowing us to have them there as guests. It was really amazing to see them realize so clearly how we feel about blessings from God because they are not religious at all. What a blessing!
They also loved the pool and couldn't believe we own one. We swam in it til really late and it was the perfect weather. When I pointed out the stars, they got so excited! It was really neat to see. China is so smoggy, seeing stars is a big deal, I'm so glad they could see them here.
I'm so glad I can have international friends, and I really do feel blessed! 19 days til China!!