Buddha

We are here in Muine, Vietnam. Being away from home and on vacation, most people will go out to eat for dinner because, well, you can't cook when you are away from home. Now, sometimes people will go to the grocery store and buy things to make sandwiches. This is not the case here. We've tried to find a place to get sandwich stuff, and we haven't been able to find it! So we just try to eat cheap! Tonight, however, we ate at a nice restaurant because we knew the girls there from last year! they asked us to come eat there tonight, so we did. Well, they hit it off really well with Stan last year and they have kept in touch with each other. One of the girls name is Jane.

Well, we ordered our food and ate a good meal. We were just hanging out at the table and decided to get the check. Stan got up to go ask Jane for the check. As he was waiting for her to draw up the check, they were chatting and Stan was making her laugh, and they looked like they were having fun! Stan came back to the table and me and Kevin got up to leave. As we were leaving the restaurant Stan said, "They told me I needed to lose weight." Me and Kev: "What?!" Stan: "Yeah, they said 'You look like-a da Buddha. I think maybe you don't exercise.'" Me and Kev: "Wow."

You see, the way things work in the Asian culture is like this: "Don't marry him. He's too fat. He's too ugly, and he doesn't make any money." A lot of times you will hear this come from the mother of a poor girl, just wanting to marry for love. It is not rude to tell someone you think they are fat. You are helping them become more healthy, and you are doing them a service. It isn't thought as cruel or rude. Friends will say this to each other. So when Stan told us this, we were surprised, but we've heard it many times about other people. It's very common in China to hear this, but we were surprised because we'd never heard it from a Vietnamese person before. Especially in this town (a beach town) everyone and everything has a laid back feel to it. No one is rushing, and everyone is soaking up some sun rays, havin a good time. This is very different from China as a whole (as well as America) but it doesn't matter that they are laid back, they are still Asian. And they will still tell you what they think about the shape of your body. Stan said it didn't bother him, but I was offended enough for the both of us! :) So I decided I would do a blog about this and explain this is how Chinese people are too. I told Stan to model how the Asian culture sees him...




And how his wife sees him...



I think the last one matters the most, don't you? Oh yeah and he gave me permission to write this blog. haha! Well, that's all for today! Thanks for reading and I love you all!