I'll Have Some Food With My Rice, Please

Recently eaten: duck
Recent annoyance: no internet

So the Mom assures me that where we are going in China has no internet. I am not entirely sure about that, but still worried I might suffer the same fate as some Chinese blogger.

Last night all of my Mom's 6 brothers and sisters came from all over for a big dinner. I must have seemed like some poor unfortunate outlander with no knowledge of Hong Kong culture. Had my cousins not been placing food morsels in my bowl, I might not have gotten anything to eat. Having grown up with just 4 in our nuclear family here, the 17 people sitting around the table all jockeying for control of the lazy susan holding the dishes was a little overwhelming.

One cousin noticed my poor shrimp peeling abilities (I kept quirting the brains everywhere when removing the head) and peeled a small mountain for me. another cousin noticed my chopsticks weren't fast enough or adept enough to pick up the food I wanted before it whizzed by to the other side of the table. And the ultimate humiliation, my Mom still had to remove the bones from my fish for me like a baby. I am pretty sure that this is rite of passage is like a Chinese barmitzvah. Once a young person is able to eat whole fish and remove the bones without choking on them, only then are they able to say "Today, I am a man." Even my youngest cousins stared at me like I was some backwards country bumpkin that had never seen the right side of a piece of duck before.

So expect radio silence for the next 7 days. I'll be in the wilds of an internet-free China.