Hospitality

We invited friends we'd met at the gym over for a barbecue. They accepted, and it was today. Funny thing, though, when cultures overlap. See, they're from El Salvador and Mexico. We're from here. When we invited them, we assumed we'd provide the main course(s), and if they offered, we'd allow them to bring a side dish of some sort or maybe beverages. That's our culture. When they accepted the invitation, they felt responsible to provide the main course(s), beverages and the dessert. That's their culture.

So, they arrived with carne asada, tortillas, rice and beans, fresh homemade salsa, beer, and a gorgeous cake from their bakery that really looked too pretty to eat! (We ate it anyway, and it's a good thing too, since it was far too delicious NOT to eat!) They insisted that we keep everything they brought, and we ended the evening with more food in the house than we planned to have even before anybody ate anything.

We laughed over cultural gaps, language gaffs, and the universal truths of being human. We had a wonderful evening. And learned that hospitality is a much broader word than we had known.