Driving to the grocery store today Mr. Mao and I were discussing weekends. My upcoming weekend is busy because we're having a birthday party. Mr. Mao's last weekend was busy because his grandparents moved their parents to a new place.
I was shocked to hear that his great-grandparents are still alive!
They aren't.
I wasn't sure what to say. He said it was very busy for his mom and her mom. I agreed that it must have been! There were 14 tables worth of people at their house for this event. I felt like getting to this point in the conversation was pretty tricky. Amazingly, we weren't done:
Mr. Mao: "At China, if you are dead and you want to move to a new place, it is very expensive."
I felt a lot of questions rising up, but wasn't sure how to follow through with any of them so I said, "I have no idea how much that costs in America."
He said something about a house being the most expensive and I just made noises that feign understanding.
What I learned today: Topics that are difficult to discuss - Politics, Religion, and moving dead people. Yikes!
By the way, he later asked me what you call your grandmother's mother and we had a mini-vocab lesson. Also, I really can't stand referring to my home as America since that can technically refer to 2 entire continents, but I haven't met a Chinese person yet that knows what The United States is. I guess I'm adapting culturally?
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