Chinese Hospitality

I slept for a good portion of that first day, and had gone to bed for the night at about 6:20 pm. Imagine my shock, then, when twenty minutes later, when I was already in the midst of a relatively deep sleep, someone came in and woke me up. Obviously my reflexes are non-existent when I sleep or I should have been concerned about the fact that someone was coming into my locked room (which I erroneously assumed I had the only key for), but I just sort of bewilderedly answered questions until finally realizing that Lucy, the lady who moved me in, was concerned that I had not eaten dinner and was taking me to dinner. She took me to Subway, because she wanted me to eat something I would recognize, and bought me an ice-cream-like product* for dessert. She told me that in China, where she is from, they believe that if your stomach is full you have no room to be homesick.

I was touched.

And I didn’t feel homesick.



*In my experience, Asian cultures struggle a bit with the whole dairy product thing. But it was still good. Just not exactly ice cream. Or custard. Or frozen yogurt.