Yum cha

Wow, guess I have a couple of days here to catch up on.

Sunday, I went to Dim Sum with V's Dad's side of the family. She has so many relatives, it's really hard to keep track of them all. Plus, in Chinese culture, people refer to their aunts and uncles in the order in which they were born. So, V will refer to them by number, not by name. If I were quizzed on which aunt or uncle was what number, I'd probably fail the test miserably. But, having hung out with her cousins a lot, and spending most family gatherings sitting at the 'kiddie's table', I do know all of the names of her cousins. I suppose that's a start.

Having learned the most basic Cantonese I possibly could before I left for Hong Kong, I tried my hardest to follow along. Problem with that was that there was so much going on, it was hard to figure out who was talking to who and in which conversation. I honestly tried my best to try to understand what was going on, but my new language skills weren't quite enough to help me out. Which is ok, cause there are many things that I do understand now. Just the conversations at the dim sum table are flying fast and furious. However, I was able to sort of figure out what was going on from people's body language and their expressions.

What I did figure out, was that her cousin Matthew is the one all of the cousins like to bug. The kid is maybe 10 years old, and what I gather from what V has told me and from what little Cantonese I understood, he's some what popular with the ladies...well, maybe not ladies, so much as girls his own age. So, they make fun of him and the supposed harem of girlfriends that he apparently has. Poor kid, I kinda felt sorry for him. But, it seems like he likes the attention. I'll tell you this though, it sure makes for entertaining conversations, even if I'm not entirely sure what's going on.

Still, all of her cousins, aunts and uncles speak some English. So, it's really not that hard to communicate with them when I need to. I met her cousin Ken just before Dim Sum. V's helping out with the MC'ing for Ken's wedding. Ken and his bride to be, Irene, are both from New Zealand. I had a pretty good conversation in English with the two of them. First time I found that I didn't need to really modify my English in order to speak to someone. That's not a slight against anyone, I just have to remind myself that I can't use complex English in order to speak with people who's first language is not English.

Oh yeah, V totally got crap from her Aunt (I don't know which one lol). Anyway, Her cousin Ben is getting married later in the month. So, with two weddings happening, she's got a lot more relatives in town than would normally be here. Plus, throw me into the mix, and it's a pretty interesting time. So, back to why V got crap. Apparently, V didn't tell everyone in her family that I was here in HK or that I was even coming to HK this December. So, Ben's mom, totally gave her crap for not telling her and then was kind enough to invite me to Ben's wedding. According to V, Ben had already invited me to his wedding or something like that. Still, it was funny to see her get crap.

One last thing, when we were on the elevator coming back up to V's apartment, there was a family in there, a mother, her elder son and her young daughter. The daughter must have been 3, maybe 4. As an elementary school teacher, V is always telling me about cute kids. So, I thought, this little girl with her little pigtails and stuff was a cute kid. V was of the opposite opinion, turns out that kid was licking her hand. Not like sucking on her thumb or something. Like full on licking her hand from her palm to the tip of her fingers. V thought that was kind of disgusting and I'm incline to agree. Although, I brought up the point that maybe the kid was not disgusting but simply the tastiest child in the world. A point that V was unable to argue.