What a beautiful day!

There's this friend of a friend of a friend who's now become my friend. Her English name is Connie. We get together about once every two weeks. Usually I go to her place, and her husband cooks while we practice Chinese and English. A lot of the other foreigners have taken Chinese culture classes either here or in their home countries, but there is nothing better than going out and meeting people. Living with a Chinese woman and spending time with Connie has given me some weird insights.

When I first met Connie, she told me that she had just recently started going out again. She had given birth to a baby less than two months prior, so this explanation made sense to me. Well, it made sense to me until she explained what she meant fully. You see, traditionally Chinese women will not leave the house for a month after giving birth. I know you're thinking, "yeah, so what?" It gets worse than that: only specific foods are allowed, nothing too spicy or cold. The part of this ritual I found most disturbing was the prohibition against bathing and washing of the hair. Apparently, the mother must restore her yin and yang, and washing will somehow throw this out of whack.

A lot of our conversations are just plain strange. A conversation I had last night went something like this:

"I told my husband that you like to eat fish. He wanted to cook some, but last night we ate this vegetable and it made our lips dry, so we can't have fish. We can have hot pot though." (Huh?)

"Oh, that sounds great!"

Another conversation:

"I've noticed that you Westerners wear less clothes than we Chinese." (It's cold here and the Chinese are big on long underwear and "I'm hiking Mt. Everest" jackets.)

"Hmm, I never noticed the difference. I suppose we do wear less layers."

"When you were little, did you only wear a little clothes? Maybe that's why you are used to it." (Huh?)

I have a lot of these strange conversations. I wish I could record them all for you. They always make me wonder if the things I say come across as weird to her as the things she says do to me.