What a weird Hday???

Ask yourself this question. What is the weirdest thing you can imagine yourself doing in an hour from now. If I would have asked myself that same question last Wednesday I wouldn't have been even close to guessing something as crazy as what actually happened.
I'm sitting at my desk around 11:15, pondering whether lineup for my fantasy baseball team. Suddenly I get a phone call, and the guy on the other end asks, "Teem do you still want to go to runch?" I forgot that I had agreed to lunch with this little Hmong man over a week ago, to discuss us hosting his golf tournament. So he tells me he'll pick me up in a half an hour.
So I get in the car with this man who I've met for 30 seconds of my life. I ask him where we are going to lunch, maybe Buffalo Wild Wings, Ruby Tuesday, or somewhere near the river? He replies with, "I'm gonna take you somewhere you never beeen." So now I'm frightened, worried, and wondering why his wife, who's sitting in the back seat never talks. So we are heading farther and farther away from my work, when he hopes on the interstate. So now crazy things are going through my mind. He exits in St. Paul and proceeds to Hmong Town.
Now I have to admit this was a place I never intended or planned on visiting in my life. So he pulls in and the first stop is the Hmong farmers market. There are hundreds of people here and every single on of them is Hmong. I am literally the only white person there. Which also means I was the tallest person there. I thought that for first time in my life I was the best basketball player out of a group. So now I'm walking around as a not only a minority, but the only minority. So we're walking around eating things I've never seen before. Some things are good, some things are bad, some things are just leaves. We walk into the market section of Hmong town. The temperature was just a shade cooler than the surface of the sun. I asked why they didn't have air conditioners, and he replied, "Teem if we would have want aer conditiona we would go to wawmat, or target." I saw Hmong clothing, movies, cd's, etc. It was basically just like any other mall, except it was 150 degrees and nobody was over 5 feet tall. So we make out way to the food court.
The food court was our next stop. Having worked with food quite a bit, and having my food handlers license. I can say with the utmost certainty that the health inspector does not frequent Hmong town. So we sit at a table, and join a couple of men who are already there. They are very friendly and polite. We are then joined by a person described to me as General Pow's son. I am told that he is basically the son the man who negotiated the Hmong out of Laos into Thailand, and then eventually into America. So he is a dignitary to say the least. He has bodyguards with ear pieces, so he must be a big deal. Food is being brought to us by the wife of one of the men. We begin with Egg Rolls which are really good. While I'm eating a delicious egg roll, a giant vat of rice is set in the middle of the table. One man begins to dig his hands into the rice and eat with his hands. I think to myself that this man is very rude. I pick up my fork and am about to dig scoop some out when I hear, "You not need fork here, you use hands." So a quick debate breaks out in my head. Do I look rude and continue to use my "American" fork, or do I dig my hand in there. The same hand that I pissed with earlier and didn't wash my hands. The same hand that had at some point earlier counted filthy cash. This would potentially make everyone in the group violently sick. After about 3 seconds I dug my piss covered germ hands in there, and starting scooping out rice. After a few more dishes, like pork and sausage, I was told we were getting a delicacy. Out comes 5 bowls of soup for us all. The bowls barely touched the table top, and the guys were digging in. It was the first time that some of them had used silverware. I am looking at it, wondering what it is. As I'm about to take my first bite, I am told it is intestine soup. I've never seen an intestine, but I was pretty accurate on what I kind of thought an intestine would look like. I don't know what it was the intestine too, maybe a pig??? Whatever it was it was terrible. So I ate about a half dozen or so bites, and called lunch over. The meal itself was fine. But I had never eaten so many things that I didn't know what they were.
After lunch we cruised out the market a little bit more, and he explained the Hmong culture to me. His wife was with the entire time, and I had yet to hear her speak. We finally leave and head back to work. The people were very polite, and very friendly. But this was one of the oddest, and strangest things I've ever done. I was not prepping myself for a cultural experience. I was not mentally prepared to be a minority that day. After 2 1/2 hours I was ready to be back in my world. The man ended up booking a golf tournament. So It all worked out in the long run. I finally was coming out of culture shock, and then I remembered I'd most likely do it all again when I went to Sams Club.