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2003-10-25
Intercultural Awareness

2:28 p.m.

Last night we had Cultural Night at ISU. The students from the summer program who decided to go for the Master's are finally here (because they did the summer session, they didn't have to do Module 1) and we are now a full class, so the faculty decided it was time to introduce to each other foods from our respective homelands. Guess what the Americans came up with? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, biscuits, pecan pie, and queso. The Canadians made pancakes with maple syrup and these things called Nanaimo Bars which I actually first made on Tuesday at the request of Mark for the dinner that Brooke and I put on. It's in three layers, and there was enough base layer left that Ruey and Kelly, who made them for last night, used that. I found that extremely amusing.

Some of the other types of food were several Greek dishes (see, Becca, I still had Greek food, and for your benefit, it was Mousaka, Briam, and Dolmades); Indian curry-rice and chicken dish; Japanese rice dish; desserts from Scotland: an incredible cake thing that Ollie called a 'cootie', as well as a trifle; and a lot of other things that I don't remember. The French students showed up with escargot and frog legs. I tried the escargot, I really did! And a tiny bite of frog legs, but I couldn't bring myself to eat the whole thing. Also, someone had brought blood sausage and while it made me rather sick to even think of that, both Ruey and Will tried it. Will is not squemish at all and will try anything, even haggis, which, fortunately, the Scots didn't bring.

One thing about gross foods is that here, IN THE GROCERY STORE, they sell horse meat. I'm not kidding. Okay, so I know that in the Old West that sometimes, for the purpose of survival, people had to kill and eat their horses, but I can't think of eating a horse with any less disgust than I can think of eating dogs. Will, however, I am sure, would try the horse meat. Blech.

After the ISU party, we headed over to Will, Fabio, and Beth's place to continue the festivities. Fabio is Italian, but adores the US. He wants to move there, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is his hero. He has this dictionary of "American" words. Not English, but American. It was very amusing to see all these words that we just take for granted. Of course, that's been one of the most-discussed points here, especially among native-English speakers. We have a lot of fun discussing what different words mean to different people. Some of the non-native speakers are also eager to pick up slang. Two of the French speakers are interested in learning cuss words. One asked me the difference between "witch" and another word that sounded like it. In the process, I made the mistake of telling him that during high school, there was this guy who teased me about being a witch because of my nearly-black eyes. So now, he calls me a little witch. I can't say as I mind, since I think it would be something to actually be a witch. One reason why I love Harry Potter so much. Of course, I would only use my powers for good, unless I was excessively annoyed, and even then the worst that I would do would be to turn the person into a newt.

Tonight, I am having all of the girls over to watch some chick flicks. Brooke and I were all about watching Pride & Prejudice (which I received from Fred and Katie as a birthday present and ranks right up there in my top 5 presents ever), but as it's a rather looong movie (~6 hours), most of the other girls weren't terribly excited. So, instead, we'll be watching other movies; probably Bad Boys II and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. So much for chick flicks! We'd been planning on watching both of those for a while so I'm sure that we'll end up watching at least one of them, although we will probably still watch a chick flick. All of the guys are curious, and we keep talking about having pillow fights in our underwear and with enough wine, who knows, we might just start making out. It's great. We're having such fun messing with their minds!

I am so very bad about pictures. I don't have any to put up right now, but a lot of other people took pictures of last night and there's even one of me eating the snails and another me with just about all of the guys in the class. Go me! ;) Trust me, I'll make sure to put those up when they're put on the share drive.

What I DO have, however, are a couple of pictures of our wine-tasting trip, and some more from Mont Sainte Odile. And here they be.

Strasbourg scenery on the way to Mt Ste-Odile.

Kelly and me at the vineyard. Such children!

Brooke, Ruey, Mark, and Bhavs is under the blanket.

Brooke and Will doing their best to get themselves in more trouble. Brooke, Dr. Farrow SPECIFICALLY asked you not to climb on the wine vats!!!

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