Silly Americans

The thing that saves us clumsy and uncouth Americans is that the Chinese think we are very amusing, and well, kind of cute.

Example:
There we are having dinner out in a nice restaurant. The waitress hands us the menu and stands there waiting for us to order something. There is no, "I'll be right back to take your order". Instead there is a very nice woman who is looking at us expectantly with pencil posed as soon as we are given the menus.

In Chinese, Michael asks the waitress to give us 5 minutes. She smiles and walks away - whew.
Michael then pulls out his pocket translator and we attack the menu. About 15 minutes later we think we may be ready to order something. Luckily the place is empty so we are not hurting anyone's income by taking forever to place an order.

The hostess (where did the waitress go?) comes to take our order. Apparently for moral support, our waitress, and is that another hostess?, come over and hover nearby. Michael tries very hard to tell her what we want. It turns out they don't have one of the things we asked for. Uh oh. Now she is making a suggestion for something else. Uh... what do you suppose that is? Sure, sounds good.

(Now for the funny part)
"Lmasdkfj slkdf dkjasld j?" she asks
(that btw is Cara's interpretation of what she said and should not be mistaken for actual Chinese, which at the moment, makes even less sense)
"Ahhhh" says Michael
"Lmasdkfj slkdf dkjasld j?"
"I don't understand" Michael responds in Chinese
"Lmasdkfj slkdf dkjasld j?"
This continues with Michael trying various answers and getting pretty much the same response. This went on for over 6 minutes, and the amazing thing is that the hostess does not become annoyed. She does start laughing at us, but we deserved to be laughed at because it turned out all she was asking was, "Is that all you want?"

Finally we understood! "Yes that is all"

For the rest of the meal we had an audience of at least 2 staff members at all times. There were 2 chefs, 3 waitresses, and 2 hostesses any and all of whom could be staring at us at any given moment.

At one point Cara was having trouble with an overly large piece of lettuce and (major faux pas) tried to cut it with the side of her spoon. Within moments the waitress came by and asked if would like some silverware, (well actually a fork). When we declined, we saw one of the chefs egging the waitress on and making hand gestures showing that the silly Americans had been trying to cut their food so obviously they did need some sort of utensil and maybe we were just misunderstanding the question... again.

It could be really odd being under such scrutiny by everyone all the time, but at least they keep laughing at us. Its good to think that we can add joy to other peoples lives just by attempting to eat in public.