书城文学在鹰眼的那些记忆
2498000000046

第46章 Family Potluck

Family Potluck may sound really common to most people.It is justa family get-together meal with nothing special.However the one that I experienced is absolutely different.

Being as a foreigner in the United States,I hardly ever felt lonely even in such a small city.Just as many people know about America,it is an inter-cultural land converging people from all over the world.There you can see all colors of skins of people and experience all kinds of cultures with a surprise of finding everything amazing and fun.The Family Potluck that I mentioned above is of a differently and gigantical-ly big family which could be generalized as a family of all the foreign-ers.

Family Potluck was organized by a club named Women Interna-tional club which is set by some local English teachers who have retired from work.This WIC gathers women,married and unmarried,English Speakers and non-English speakers together,opening up a world for all the foreign females.

Family Potluck is like a mini food festival.requiring every atlend-ed family to bring a cooked dish which could best represent one’s cul-ture and heritage.Families put the dishes together and then everybody can just pick a plate and taste every one of the dishes displayed,similarto self-help.

Originally,I wanted my mom to take some Chinese dumplings there.Nevertheless,considering it may be hard to be distinguished from the Korean ones,we finally gave up this idea and took a Shandong snack as our final dish.I guess not every Chinese knows about it.It is afried desert made from flour and sugar.We made a big box of it with a simple introduction of the food.

The food in Family Potluck is really wonderful and colorful.There are chicken cooked in South American way,Salad in Korean wav.milky cake in African way and a lot of foodstuff that I had never seen before.It is to our surprise that the snack that we brought was eaten up at last and there is even a Korean girl saying that she loved it.I was so happy that I didn"t leave until the night fell.

In the evening,Kelly’s family invited mine to play sports together.We two families drove to big grassland in which we chatted a lot about the respective cultures and stories.The scene of two fathers.mothers and girls has never gone away from my memory of the days in Iowa.

In a foreign land like the United States,having some same experi-enced friends like all those foreigners can be a strong spiritual pillar of our sometimes-isolated life.A get-together of foreigners can really make me sense a tinge of home filled with warmness,enthusiasm and thendship when homesickness sprang up.Potluck is just so great an idea to gather people as well as food all over the world together.provid-ing people With a chance to communicate and make friends.

Even when I came back in China,I sometimes think of the Potluckhat I ever attended.I like having the feeling of tasting both food and cultures.