No Longer in Exile

I no longer feel like I‘m living in exile. Let me elaborate; today I went with my language exchange tutor, named Alberto, out to lunch. For all the Italians pals of my darling husband, yes, I asked for permission first and yes, I know this may seem like déjà vu since I had another Italian tutor in Seattle named Adalberto. Ciao Adalberto! Now that I have cleared that up, we went to eat a Chinese restaurant in the center of town. Upon sitting down I asked the waitress if she spoke Cantonese and she said “no”, I asked her is anyone in the building spoke Cantonese and she said “no”, when I asked her what kind of Chinese cuisine they served, she said “Cantonese”. You can’t win them all can you?

After lunch we went for a walk, chatted then drove to look for a Chinese grocery store I had spotted late one night but have to had the chance to frequent again. There were actually two in the area, one Chinese and the other Vietnamese. All I can say is that I squealed with delight when I saw frozen lumpia wrappers, rice paper, soy sauce, sesame oil, coconut milk, star anise, jasmine rice, a rice cooker, soy bean milk, canned lychees, chili oil and the like.....

Alberto was pretty much out of his element but very interested in the difference between coconut milk and coconut juice. He had also never seen guava juice, smelly dried and salted Asian fish, and jasmine tea so the visit really opened his eyes. I can’t wait to finish stocking the pantry and getting on a first name basis with the store owners. Oh happy day!