Strange vs. Normal: who's to say?

At times I feel bad for my kids, having such a strange mom. The poor kids, I know they (at least hannah) sometimes wishes I would just be normal. ;-) I hope they will appreciate it more when they are older. Maybe? The other day We were parked across the street from this market, on main st. here. We hadnt been in it yet, and I rarely pass by an ethnic grocery store without peeking in. And it happened to be lunch time, so we checked out the deli counter. In my defense, we passed by an awful lot of foods that I did NOT try to get them to eat. Like crickets or seaweed. We settled on plain sticky rice and some fairly benign looking dumpling things, with some kind of seafood inside. 

Walking around the aisles of this store really was like a world tour: all different kinds of Asian, primarily Vietnamese, Thai, and Laotian; Indian, Hispanic, and some African influenced food and products. Alot of incense, quite a few Buddhas next to statues of saints and Virgin Marys, beautiful woven baskets and plastic mats, and of course, giant (and i do mean giant) bags of rice. They did pretty well on this little field trip, but we got hungry in the grocery store (as we often do, we take so long!) and started to eat our snack. I was not surprised to find it overwhelmingly fishy, and saw that they mixed the skin in there with everything else. This was difficult for me to get used to in Senegal, where it was prepared the same way, but at least there were no eyeballs. (I dont think). My kids took a few bites and proceeded to complain loudly. Then, in front of the extremely kind and helpful check out lady, expressed strongly that they did not want to eat this weird food for lunch, they wanted normal food. Of course with kids, a subtle "please stop, can we talk about this later" glance is completely ineffective. 

As embarrassing as it can be with young children, I will continue to take every opportunity to help them explore other cultures. I am so grateful they have this available to them here, in small(ish) town rural Minnesota. We dont have to go to NYC or Miami or Seattle, we have so much right here. And i really hope that it will help to have this exposure in little bits and pieces, before they are completely surrounded by everything strange and different. They are leaning how to be polite and respectful of other cultures. In the car, we talked about how they are allowed to feel however they want, but to wait till we are in the privacy of our home to express those feelings. And never, ever assume that nobody around you speaks English. (I was always amazed at people who would say something rude, thinking they were pulling one over on my Senegalese friends because they said it in a nice tone of voice with a smile. So condescending. "Wow, that is the nastiest looking fish head i've ever seen, I'm not eating that!" There is a good chance someone around you speaks English. But I digress.) 

I hope my kids enjoy the coconut chicken curry noodles we are having for supper more than they did our snacks the other day. And I hope that they remember that some people may be offended by their speaking in gibberish and pretending to eat with their hands and saying they're "African." But they may not. They will do the same embarrassing cultural mistakes over and over again, as will Patrick and I! We will keep trying together, and I have found that in every culture, if you are sincerely friendly, humble, and show a desire to learn, people have so much grace for you! So, who wants to come to our house for dinner? ;-)