An evening with the nieces experiencing another culture

Copied from an e-mail that I sent. Lazy, but why reinvent that proverbial wheel?

Autumn Moon was fun. We pet chicks and milked goats (Emma marched right up there and stuck out her hand. That poor goat needed all the help she could get! She looked miserable!) Emma liked the pigs while Sarah liked the chicks. Emma couldn't figure out what the miniature horse was, I believe. She stared at it like, "Do I touch you?" And we went on a hayride and selected and bought pumpkins out of the patch and ate and had a bonfire and...

The ceremony became terribly disorganized because of the hayride schedule, but we got the gist of what they were doing. The Chinese do this once a year (springtime there) to honor and remember their ancestors. One of the Jei-Jeis (big sisters) told me that it wasn't quite as simple as we make it, but I guess we got the point. All they did last night was call the children from the crowd, introducing them by their names and by their birthplaces. (The bios got to participate, too, so you'd hear "Cincinnati, OH" at one moment, then "Jiangxi Province" the next.) Then the children took a lighted incense stick and stuck it in a pot. I was prepared to be touched by the ceremony, but so much activity was going on that it soon became a free-for-all, so it didn't work that way; but what DID touch me was this couple and their son (?). He is studying at UC and I believe his parents were with him. They didn't speak one word of English. (Actually, the man told Emma and me "bye" as they left but that was it.) I didn't know this at the time I sat Sarah down next to them, though. This woman smiled ALL OVER herself and started talking to Sarah. I got the idea that she was asking Sarah how old she was, but Sarah didn't get it. Then their son (?) asked her in English and she held up 4 fingers. The woman LOVED it. The family talked to Sarah and played with her and Emma (they sat her between them at one point) until they left. Sarah took right to them, too. Emma didn't seem to mind them much, either. The man picked Sarah up and hugged her before he left. They just seemed to be delighted with the girls. I suppose the language barrier had kept most of the children and parents away all evening. When we sat next to them, we didn't care they didn't speak English and they cared as little that we didn't speak Chinese. I got to speak, too, to a couple other exchange students. They are all very sweet people. In the end I took an application for a jei-jei for Mary. I think I'll get started now with that and update when we know about her specifically. It broke my heart last night to see Sarah not understanding what that couple was saying to her when they obviously adored her so much. I decided then that I will do what I can to help Mary keep that connection as well as other connections to her birth culture; after all, she will always be Chinese. Why can't she be fortunate enough to be connected to Dragonfests and ancestral ceremonies AND baseball and apple pie?