My friend who lived in China was the Young Women's President. For a Christmas Activity she planned a "white elephant" gift exchange and passed the information onto her young women who came from many different countries with differing levels of English competency. One of the moms and daughter spent a lot of time looking all over Shanghai to come up with the perfect gift to exchange. Can you guess what it was?
What else would you bring to a "White Elephant Gift exchange" except a white elephant. I'm glad they could all laugh about it afterwards.
It reminded me of the time in Spain when I was trying to have a friendly conversation with one of the neighborhood boys about his cute little Scottish terrier dog. All was going well until he pointed to this dog and said, "Ella tiene una mala uva!" I processed this and realized that he had just told me his dog had a "bad grape". I'm sure I nodded wisely and said something brilliant like "Si, Si" all the while not having any idea what a dog having a bad grape even meant! My Spanish teacher was shocked when I told her this story & said that a "well brought up child" would never use such an expression with an adult that he didn't know very, very well. Ok, so not only did I have no idea what he was trying to tell me, I also didn't know that he was being rude. Just so you'll know, to have a "bad grape" means to have a bad attitude. Languages are strange sometimes!
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