Field Chicken--aka Frog

Yes, I, PapaEggroll, am again being allowed to guest host the recent Blog worthy news. It is a privilege and an honor to be able to write to all of our good friends and family.

So, we were recently asked to go on an outing with our landlord one Saturday. Although knowing that "outings" could be full of unexpected events, we agreed anyway and set off for some adventure. We drove for about two hours to the destination, but because our landlord's son, who is about 2.5 years old, was sitting, or should I say standing, in the front seat and refused to put on his seatbelt, our landlord drove about 40 kilometers per hour. To most Americans, we have no idea what that translates into, but if you'll closely on the dash board in the speedometer it is roughly equivalent to 25 miler per hour, yes for TWO hours; that is the reason it took two hours. Two hours could have got me half way to Outback (at 70mph), but I digress. Emma, by the way, was in one of the sweetest, most patient moods she has ever been in, so we were thankful to Him for that blessing this fine ‘adventureful’ day. So instead of being half way to Outback, we were completely in Nowheresville. The weather was super that day, the sky was a clear blue like I hadn't seen it since being back in the States, and what, what was that I didn't hear...traffic, no noise, no noise at all. It's hard to imagine 'quiet' when you live in noise all the time, and it was sure nice.

The original plan: go fishing. In the end: it wasn't a good time to fish b/c of construction of new houses. So what did we end up doing? Eating. Finally, we arrived a restaurant set in some rolling hills with a nice river flowing beside it. There were even small boats one could rent if one desired to row back and forth. The food was good and cheap. Our landlord order a lot, too much in fact, enough for at least ten people to eat and get really full, but there were just three adults and two kids, three including 'Mantha but she wasn't eating rice this day.

As we looked at the menu prior to ordering, our landlord says, "oh let's order 'field chicken' because you can't get it in the city." "Okay," I said thinking that 'field chicken' meant sparrow or some harmless bird that was caught in a trap, or maybe it did mean a real chicken but just a smaller version of it, maybe just a few weeks old. They brought out the cooked and sautéed bird, and man, I tell you, the sauce was great, the meat was skimpy, but hey, what do you expect from a sparrow, but it was finger lickin' good. Rachel even tried some, and Emma had a few bites. The setting was great, the food was great, the ride was not so good, but all in all, we had a great day enjoying Creation and speaking Asianese for most of the day.

A few weeks later we were telling this story to some friends and an Asian friend was in on the conversation (his English is great), and I said the word "field chicken" in Asianese, and he said, "Oh you had frog." I thought to myself, "Man, my Asianese isn't getting any better because I thought he just said the word 'frog.'" And then I realized, he said it in English. "Frog?" "Yes, frog," he said. Rachel and I both looked at each other and laughed. Who knew there were multiple words for frog? Not us obviously.

So, cheers to the field chicken, the Eggroll familia all had frog for the first time at the same time.