Allan and I will soon be leaving for Japan, and as we prepare for our adventure, it reminded me of another Asian trip we took years ago to China on a Wendy Wu tour, spending a month touring the country and seeing the sights. We had folks from the U.S. on the tour, as well as a few from England and Australia. Our guide, Candy, was excellent, and she spoke English fairly well.
During our orientation meeting after the welcome dinner, Candy laid out the itinerary and told us what we should expect weather-wise as we traversed from one side of China to the other, what the amazing sights we would be visiting were, what the food would be like, etc. She gave us the lowdown on the beds in the hotels (which were like sleeping on cement), and also on the “happy house”, (which were not too happy since they were merely a hole in the ground sans toilet paper).
Everyone was listening very carefully, and when Candy mentioned that some of the happy houses were a bit dark inside, one of the Brits on our tour exclaimed cheerfully, “Oh, no problem. We have our torches with us.”
Well, the look on Candy’s face was priceless. Her eyes opened wide in panic, and she began to shake her head rapidly. “No fire! No allowed! No safe!” she emphatically stated. We all started to laugh and then we reassured her that there’d be no blazing bonfires being started in the happy houses, since most of us knew the Brits were referring to their flashlights.
The next evening, we were chatting over glasses of beer with those same Brits, and one guy mentioned the pastas in their village. I said, “Oh, we love eating pastas. We try all different shapes and sizes. Allan favors the thin pastas, and I love the broad pastas. We eat them quite often!”
When we started talking about eating pastas, our English friends’ faces resembled Candy’s shocked expression when they had mentioned torches.
“What do you mean you eat pastas?” one Brit nervously queried while taking a step backward.
And then another Brit lowered his voice, also taking a step backward, and said in disbelief, “You eat the people who preside over the church services?”
And I swear, they all nonchalantly started looking for the exits.
It took me a minute to comprehend, and then I said, “You mean PASTORS?”
“What? No!” they emphatically said. “PASTAS!”
And then we all laughed.
But I’m sure for a nanosecond before the laughter, the Brits were surmising we might be cannibals. And in that same nanosecond, they were probably regretting the fact that their flashlights weren’t tiki torches, since those flames on a stick could have come in handy to fend us off had we started boiling water in a huge black cauldron and gotten out the salt and pepper.