International Night

Tonight was International Night at Mason Ridge.  Kathee signed us up to do a table for the country of Ethiopia.  She worked her tail off.  We put our minds together to decide what to offer, and then (surprise, surprise) Kathee put it all together.

Kathee roasted some of the coffee beans I had bought when we were in Ethiopia to adopt Gideon.  She uses our hot air popcorn popper and roasts them slowly.  I will admit it did look a bit funny walking down the sidewalk to our apartment and looking up at our window.  The window was wide open and the noise of the hot air popper (sounding like a leaf blower) is working away roasting them. At first I wondered why she was going to shoot popcorn out of the window to the ground below.  It only made sense once I got into the apartment.

She also drove down to Meskerem, our favorite Ethiopian restaurant and bought injera, and three different types of sample food so people could taste some.

Along with that, she printed out some word finds and a couple other handouts.  We took Gideon's flag, the two Ethiopian chairs, and Kathee's coffee pot and off we went.

The Pakistanis next to us LOVED the Ethiopian food.  Holy smokes.  They probably ate half of all the samples we had.  Kathee was great to them and ended up giving them the name and address to Meskerem.  We also received the names and addresses of two Pakistani places here in St Louis.  We are pumped to try them out when we get a chance.

The greatest thing about us hosting the table is the just about no one there knew where Ethiopia even is.  Like not even that it is in Africa.  So we continue to represent Ethiopia wherever we find ourselves.

I also met a guy who I found out was hosting the South Korean table.  He came up to our table and we chatted for 5 or 10 minutes.  He asked if we were new and what brought us to St Louis.  It turns out that the son of his youth pastor is a student at Covenant (I have 3 or 4 classes with him).

He seemed very surprised how much I knew about South Korean (which isn't very much).  When I was telling Gideon that Korea has the most amount of Presbyterians than anywhere in the world, Theo responded, "I'm Presbyterian."  So I asked him if he attended the Korean Presbyterian Church in town and he said that his father was one of the founding elders.  I told him about our friends from Covenant and so forth.  It was a pretty cool connection (his son is a first grader, but in another classroom).  

So on the way home Kathee and I troubleshot some changes if we do this again next year.  It was a fun night.  

They had Irish dancers, Greek dancers, and a Kung Fu thing as well.  It was very cool.