Chinese

A majority of the people on our cruise are from China. Like, 99% of the people. My family is Chinese, but they have resided in the Philippines for a few generations.  Although we may be genetically similar, the cultural differences weren't lost on us.

Some of the native Chinese people came from the more rural areas of mainland, where social maxims were not so strongly encouraged.  These same people also did not speak English.  I can't stress enough, that not ALL Chinese people were

Unfortunately, being on a boat with about 1900 Chinese people meant that I was getting pushed around a lot. So was my mom. It's super frustrating when you can't tell someone to stop pushing you out of the way because they don't understand anything you're saying.

<Huge sigh>

Unfortunately, it only took about a day for my mom to absorb this behavior into her repertoire.

We were standing in one of the ship's bars. I tried to get out of her way. She grabbed my arms, said, "No, stay right there."

Then she, full on, body checked me.

That's right. She pushed me....

Before I could snap myself out of the momentary bewilderment, she came from behind me, and DID IT AGAIN.

It was then that I really missed having access to my blog, because China blocks all sorts of fun websites.

What made me really laugh was whenever we ran into other Americans, Australians, or Europeans on the boat. She talked about how everyone just assumed that she was "just another rude Chinese person" on the ship.