Spill The Beans

Tonight I was invited to come have dinner at the student workers house from the Study Abroad Office I work for. She and her family are Bosnian immigrants. At first I was excited, then I was nervous, then I was a delightful mixture of both.

First of all, I have no idea if I can even point Bosnia out on the map. Someone as globally ignorant as myself deserves to be a little nervous about nights like this one. However, I love different cultures and love people in general even more. My co-workers and I were honoured to be invited into this girl’s world for an evening.

Oddly enough, the girl lives in the same neighborhood I often babysit in. Right down the street from where I have watched Matilda 4,000 times and played  Pictionary an exhausting number of times. It never ceases to amaze me how small the world is without us even knowing. 

My two co-workers and I arrived at the house, which wasn’t even a house at all. Naively I expected to find myself at a tiny house tucked away in one of the “immigrant neighborhoods” in town. What I really found was a castle and an obvious amount of wealth. The girl (or princess of the castle) who lives there has to be the most modest person alive. Which is one of the best qualities in the world. For this I think she deserves a castle setting.

Her parents and siblings marched down one by one to greet us. All four of the kids spoke english, while the mom and dad could piece together sentences here and there in english. Some people may have hated this, but I would not have had it any other way. I think people from different parts of the world need to get together in this way more often. Language shouldn’t (and doesn’t have to) separate us at all. In fact, I think this “barrier” helps us relate even further. You’re forced out of your comfort zone and there is no meaningless “fluff” conversation involved. It’s more real.

Anyway, enough with my rambling break.

I wasn’t sure what to expect Bosnian food to entail. I was speculating that it would be spicy and possibly a little unappetizing to me. Well, hours later I am still feeling extremely full from the amount of delicious dishes I shoved down my throat. Bosnian food consists of a lot of potatoes, vegetables and meat from what I can tell. I honestly can’t name any of the dishes I had (apart from the most amazing pita bread that exists in the world), but each thing I tried was excellent. Stuffed peppers, pita bread, homemade Bosnian pizza and some cabbage concoction that will probably make up a lot of my dreams tonight. Dessert was a rice dish (that was dyed pink).

But the best part was the coffee. Bosnian coffee deserves a separate blog of its own. The girl’s mom even had heart-shaped sugar for us. And she sent me home with my own bag of the coffee to have at home. I didn’t even have to say words to express my thanks, you could see the joy in my eyes.

After that we all settled down to watch Bosnian tv and discuss certain cultural differences. It was an amazing discussion, even many parts had to be slowly translated between languages. I knew that there was a large population of Bosnian people in BG, but before this night I did not know much about them, their culture or the amazing journey it took/takes for them to be here. Talking with these people gave me insight into a whole new part of the world that I may have otherwise missed. I will definitely be finding Bosnia on the map tomorrow.

I think experiences like these open my eyes to all the things I take for granted. Also, while I am proud to be American, I am realizing more and more how precious time is and how many Americans don’t use it wisely. We sat there talking and eating for 3 hours and just enjoyed ourselves. No rush to get anywhere or any of that nonsense. We could stand to learn a lesson from other parts of the world. There is more to life than work and rushing from one activity to the next.

I’m so blessed to have these experiences and meet these people. 

I am not blessed to be so grotesquely full now. In fact, pardon me while I go “run” (aka pass out in a food coma)