McDonalds

We finally broke down and went to McDonalds.

Plan A was to go to a lovely Cantonese Dim Sum restaurant that Ben's boss had recommended. Yet seeing as how it was so late and Bobo wouldn't last much longer, and we still had groceries in the trunk we had to get home first, and weekend city traffic is painful, it was decided that Ben would drop the boys and I off at the doorstep of McDonalds while he went home for grocery drop off and then back again. I was pretty confident that I could handle this "little piece of America" on my own. However, it turned out that the foreign factors still won.

First challenge was simply the excited, little boys factor--geographically irrelevant but inter-culturally heightened due to the public interest that we generate wherever we go. Ryley and Julien couldn't contain their excitement at their anticipated playplace climbing time and Theo saw French fries on other people's trays and couldn't contain his excitement (or demand) for them as well.

Second challenge was the ordering. I realized that the time for looking up my hamburger and fries vocabulary had passed. With a fries-reaching-frenzied toddler on my hip, diaper bag and purse on my shoulder, booster-seat in my hand, and eyes in two opposite directions on my other bouncing boys, I saw what I thought was a lucky break in a stack of coupon booklets on the counter: I'd simply pick one up and point to what I'd like saying, "yi ge" (one) of those, those and those. I warned the boys that our menu items would be limited to what I could manage to ask for but that I'd do my best for a hamburger for Ryley and chicken nuggets for Julien. The cashier seemed to be responding well to my point-at-the-coupon-picture method, but then he threw in a new factor and started to speak a few words of English. Yay, I thought, that should make this easier. I pointed to the smurf toy and asked for 2, he said "happy meal" I eagerly nodded and specified that the chicken nuggets and hamburger where for them (touching each boy's heads). He said "coke" I asked "milk?" he shook head. I asked "only soda?" he said "yes, you want Sprite?" I said ok. Then I pointed to a picture of a chicken wrap for me and said "with Sprite too, please."

We were given a number and waited in our typical circus-attraction fashion until it was indicated that our trays of food were ready. I looked at the trays of food, at the confident eyes of the McDonald's employee as he double checked the order slip, and back at the trays containing 5 orders of fries, 2 orders of chicken nuggets, a hamburger, a big mac, a chicken wrap and 5 Sprites (3 large, 2 small) ??? I hesitated only a moment, knowing that I hadn't the language skills to attempt to explain that I hadn't meant to order all of that food or even to ask if someone else's order hadn't accidently been added to my mine. Instead I spotted the nearest table the boys could manage to get the trays safely transported to and we dove in--Theo's fry excitement finally being satisfied!

 I did enjoy my chicken wrap with its Asian twist: a spicy rice patty in the middle of it all.

We ate as much as we could (not wanting the embarrassment of a public display of waste). I sent Ben a message not to order anything when he got there because we had him covered. Down to one tray of food, we managed to get everyone and everything up the stairs to the playplace area. It smelled of sweaty kids and stinky shoes, just as it should, and the boys were so excited to join the fun. Their arrival created quite the stir among the other kids. Ryley and Julien are so funny in how oblivious they are to the attention. Theo loved working his crowd of adoring fans (mostly little girls who liked to pet his head and coo over him). He spun in circles and tried on their shoes and made doggy sounds, all to their "ke ai"'ing delight.  Ben showed up quite a bit later (bad traffic) with his own tray of food, not having received my message. As I recounted my ordering fiasco he gave me a curious look and stated that he simply said "wo yao ba" (I want 8) and pointed to the meal option on the big menu overhead. Why does he always do things the easy way?!