East meets West

Way back at the beginning of the summer, we had the pleasure of hosting two international travelers from two very different cultures, and what fascinated me most were not the differences between them, but the similarities.  On her first trip abroad from the States, MacKenzie arrived in late June tö visit her boyfriend/our son Tim, and although she stayed with him in Mainz, we also spent time together, as it was the very first time we met in person.  Overlapping with her visit was the 4th International Youth Music Festival here in Hochheim, and as Sam was participating in that event, we hosted  Slavic for the week, a Russian piano player Sam's age that (luckily) spoke English quite well.  MacKenzie and Slavic were both physically at our house at the same time on only one occasion I think, but during the days when both were our guests, it was interesting to  observe and compare theses two young people from very different backgrounds.

I knew from my Russian friend Natascha (Sam's piano teacher -- do you detect a theme here?) that in certain little things American and Russian culture are not far apart, aspects not always shared by the Germans.  For example, the floor on which one enters a building is the 1st floor and the next one up is the 2nd in both American and Russian.  The Germans consider the bottom level "the ground floor", and only start counting floors one flight up, causing confusion for many international travelers.  While watching Slavic eat his meals with us, I realized his manners also resembled those of Americans, constantly switching the fork from his right to his left hand when he needed a knife to cut his food, and then the knife was put down and the fork went back to his right hand again to pop the morsel in his mouth.  If using two utensils for a meal (like fork and knife or fork and spoon for pasta dishes), Germans keep the cutlery firmly in their grip the entire time, a system much more efficient and practical, but requiring graceful eating with the "less-favored" hand.  I adopted this custom very early on, especially after my father-in-law let me know that keeping my left hand in my lap while eating with the right one (as practiced in the States) was considered very bad manners in Germany.  Should it not be holding a utensil, the polite thing to do is rest the hand on the table next to the plate he taught me.

But back to our young friends.  Both showed a willingness to help that was downright touching.  MacKenzie grew up with her parents and 2 sisters on a farm, and is clearly used to helping out all over the house and farmyard.  As she is studying culinary arts, she is very familiar with the kitchen and loves to cook.  Since her visit coincided with Lukas' birthday and assorted other events requiring food, I was very thankful for her assistance in preparing meals.  She also pitched in when our new walk-in closet was completed and needed to be filled.  Slavic lives with his mother and seems to be very involved with the housework too, a novelty among 15-year-old young men in Germany or the USA I dare say.  He insisted on ironing his own shirts (which he did exceptionally well), and was super conscientious of rinsing out his glass and putting it back on the shelf (which I eventually talked him out of, as I got tired of finding wet glasses in the cupboard).  His home obviously does not have all the conveniences we take for granted, as he was unfamiliar with the dishwasher (although he had seen one before at his aunt's place) and inquired what the peppermill was for.

We enjoyed the time with our visitors and are happy that we could share our home with them.  For me it was fun to watch East meet West, and find myself once again inbetween.

Back to Blogging

Ah, a steaming mug of coffee next to me, the sun pouring in the window, complete sentances already formed in my head waiting to be written down, I am back to blogging!  Well not really.  I am actually in my bathrobe with no beverage in sight and my thoughts are more of a jumble, but they still are crying to get out.  And although the sun is indeed shining, I am sitting on the north side of the house, so it never really "pours" into this room.  No matter, I am still ready to start blogging  again.  In the last few months, life just moved too fast for me to write about it.  As a matter of fact, due to all the remodeling we had done, I am now sitting in front of the computer in a completely different room -- how's that for a change of perspective?!?  Ofcourse if I had a laptop, that wouldn't be anything special, but I actually enjoy having one place dedicated for the computer (just call me old-fashioned).  So this is just a short post to get my fingers and my thoughts warmed up for the real thing.