I'm so Chinese...or not

Some days I feel so indigenous. I do something that feels really Chinese and I feel super proud of myself, like "yeah, I'm getting the hang of this culture." And then other times I realize I have so much to learn about this place.

Here's an example of me feeling proud for being "chinesey": After our flower arranging lesson I was trying to decide what to do with my very Chinese arrangement. (I am proud of it because I felt like it was so non-western looking but I also didn't actually like it very much for the very same reason) Anyway, so what do you do with a something you're proud of but don't really want to keep yourself? Give it to your grandma of course! That's what I did! I gave it to Milk Grandma. It was kinda my turn to give a gift. She gave me the dumplings recently so the ball was in my court. She seemed to like it and I felt really proud of myself for being so Chinese! Gift giving is not my love language but it definitely speaks volumes in this culture. Yeah me for making a Chinese flower arrangement and then giving it to my neighbor!

And here's a recent example of how far I have to go in learning this culture: Last night Andy and I were out in the courtyard with some other foreign friends and their kids. We were having a great time playing our American game of freeze tag and decided to teach the 10 Chinese kids out there how to play with us. It was going great at first but there were too many kids running around so they were getting "unfrozen" way to fast! We decided we needed to make the "get unfrozen" process a little harder. So I suggested that they had to crawl through the persons legs that they were wanting to unfreeze. Sounded good to me. Andy told them this rule in Chinese and they all busted out saying, "NO! NO! NO!" Why didn't they like the new rule? First I thought that they just didn't want the game to be harder. But then I decided I knew for sure what they were thinking...THE GROUND HERE IS SO DIRTY! WE CAN'T CRAWL ON THE GROUND. That made total sense to me but they were still yelling, "No! We can't!" It turns out they didn't care about the game being harder nor did they care about the dirty factor...they were scared of ghosts! Little did I know, in this culture which believes heavily in superstition, they think that if you crawl through a persons legs you will call out the ghosts. Talk about coming from two different worlds!

It's the little things like learning how to love people in their "love language" that encourage me and make me feel like I am a part of this world. And it's also the little things, like seeing how my American child game is unthinkable in this culture, that keep me humble and make me realize I have so much to learn!