Family Dinner with our Uzbek friends

We went to an Uzbek family home this evening. This is a very nice family with three teen age daughters and a young son. When we hit the front door, I reminded my kids to take off their shoes. Our oldest asked me if I didn't think they knew this by now. It was a good question. We then went in and were ushered to the dining table where we all sat together. On the table waiting for us was coke, chocolates, candied orange slices and a plate of fruit. We ate a couple of these and then were served shredded carrots with oil and a spicy pepper. After a few minutes we were served salad with thinly cut cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and oil. After the salad we were given little, triangular stuffed pitas with onions and beef inside. At this point I am beginning to get really full but I knew... What I knew is that there was more coming and I needed to eat it. One of the kids looked over the counter into the kitchen and saw "Plov." Plov is a rice dish with almond slivers and carrots and sometimes it has plumped up raisins. Picture a large dinner plate. This is the size of plate we were each served completley full and stacked 4 inches high with meat on the top. I got through about 1/4 of it and then, because I knew that wasn't enough, sat and talked and ate a spoonful, talked more and ate. That way I got a little more eaten but still had to make certain our host knew that I loved their food, but was unable to eat it all. I explained that most Americans only eat a portion of a plate full of rice. Robert who had finished his rice said "My wife has an American stomach and I have an Armenian stomach." I didn't point out that Monique had the same stomach make up as he did exept that she was a girl and she had eaten as much as me. It is true that he can just do what he needs to in a culture and does not find it difficult. He just does it. As soon as we sat down at the table last night, the father asked one of his girls to get something. Out came three books, three different flavors of Uzbek/English dictionaries. We all sat around and began the work of communicating. For Robert & I we look at it as a logic problem. What is he saying? What does he want to say? What is the topic? At one point we all had a good giggle. When we were served dinner Monique sat quietly waiting. I asked her why she wasn't eating. She said she had been taught to wait until the men eat. Robert & I explained that we had been seated together and served together so they expected us to eat together. Had they seated Robert and the father first it would have been different. We had said that all in reugular English so then we had to backtrack and explain the conversation to the parents of the home. When they understood it they laughed heartily and explained that they did not do things that way. It was not their culture. We had a good time last night talking about the English language, the Uzbek language, education and culture.After dinner we came home and college students came here. We edited papers and when we hit our bed last night we calcualted that we had worked an 18 hrs. It was a long day but a good one!