Clash of the Cultures!

During our village homestay, our hostess, Agness, provided us with a loaf of bread to eat for breakfast. This loaf had been partially eaten by a rat, and the remaining portion was feeding several cockroaches. We decided to swap out the nasty, unopened loaf in favor of a clean loaf we had opened earlier in the weekend. We finished off that loaf and threw away the wrapper. Unfortunately, Agness came back in, saw that the first loaf had not been touched, and left in a huff, thinking we had not eaten anything! We finally realized that she was upset with us because she thought we didn’t want to eat her food, so we apologized profusely and told her numerous times how we thought she fed us so well! Then we gave her a cultural lesson from America as one of the girls told her, “In America, my mother always told me to finish the loaf and THEN open the second loaf…never open two loaves at once!” It eased the problem, but we all decided that if we were served the rat and cockroach loaf again, we would simply have to eat it!