Internationals and Thanksgiving Dinner

Yesterday was sooooo exciting. We had the privilege of having 4 international students from PSU over for a traditional American Thanksgiving Dinner (as we know it). They were from China. They hadn't ever been in an American home before. One girl said her only impression of an American home was what she'd seen on TV. Poor girl. That's a horrible way to know who Americans are. That's sad 'cause most of American families are nothing like the movies. Unfortunately we allow these movies and tv shows to represent our country. I can't stand it. I can't think of one movie that accurately describes home or life, as I know it, in the media.

I made my family's traditional meal by myself, for the second time ever. All a success. These students didn't eat much. I had bought stuff for lunch, thinking dinner would be later, and they wanted nothing to do with American food. Now they did eat some at dinner. The one guy loved the corn. And they all ate turkey. But they didn't even touch the gravy that I believe is one of the perks of the meal. And even though I noticed this I wasn't bothered by it. They thought stuffing was an odd concept.

They spent most of the day playing with my children. On T-day eve, I spoke to one student about transportation and he'd heard my baby, Katherine, crying in the background and said how much he loves babies. When they arrived here she was who they took to first. My older three played in the snow with them for hours while dinner was cooking. We prayed for dinner and they bowed their heads, then, didn't know that AMEN was the finishing of the prayer. I thought that was a common ending to anything. I don't know. That just shows how ignorant I am. I don't mean to be.

We did look up how to say hello in Chinese. Ni-haow. Not sure of the spelling. One girl showed my son how to write it in Chinese and told of the meanings of each symbol. It was really cool. I liked having them here.

We watched a movie that evening and they departed with lots of hugs and intentions of keeping in touch. We definitely will do that again. I highly recommend it if you have a notion to invite people over for a meal.