Surprising Encounter

Today, my roomie Hyemee and I met a guy from Saudi Arabia whose name I didn't quite catch (sorry). However, he was cooking some amazing chicken with onions in the dorms' common kitchen. It smelled really good. After exchanging some basic Chinese sentences, he asked us to join him and his friends for dinner in his room. We were unprepared for this invitation and had nothing to bring over except some Chinese candies. Turns out, the other guests were from Yemen and Sudan. Only one of them (the Sudan guy - Ah Ding) was fluent enough in Chinese to communicate with Hyemee. So the conversation went between Hyemee and Ah Ding. They then needed a timeout for Ah Ding to translate in Arabic to his friends and Hyemee in English to me since I could understand only 30% of their Chinese exchanges. Nonetheless, I felt very privileged to be sitting on their carpet and eating chicken rice, because I had never thought by coming to China, I would be sharing a meal with people from these countries. I have travelled a few miles in my short lifetime, but have never encountered Saudis, Yemenis and Sudaneses. We didn't especially bond (heck, they didn't even ask my name) and couldn't speak directly to each other, but it was still very nice of them to welcome us and share their food with two strangers. 

Now, my biggest wish is for Hyemee (a South Korean citizen) to befriend those two North Korean guys in her class so we can all have a meal together. Haha, I doubt that will happen...

Chinese candy

P.

2 comments:

  1. UnknownSeptember 30, 2013 at 10:38 AM

    Was the candy good? The packaging doesn't look very appealing. :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. P.October 13, 2013 at 1:44 PM

      Haha it's not awesome. You can easily live without it.

      Delete

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