Last night, after we attended Catholic Mass downtown, (I’m not Catholic but it’s an English language service.) we went to make latkes with a friend of ours here.  She is Jewish, as I am, though I’m a Christian too.  So she had us and her closest friend, also Jewish, over for prayers and supper last night.  Jessicat makes the BEST latkes.  The ones I had growing up were like a MacDonald’s hashbrown that had been run over several times by a car with an oil leak.

As we were standing and watching her fry in her long narrow kitchen, I was reflecting on the whole event – us three Jewish women, 2 of us American, our hostess Canadian who is married to a German man.  The other woman is married to a Chinese man who edits plays and novels here in Shanghai.  So many pieces of the world connecting in that tiny room last night spanning so many cultures and beliefs.  Their young children were building forts in the living room and we were drinking gin and eating Jewish celebration food swapping stories.  LJ, the dude who is Chinese and married to a woman who is a New York Jew like myself was asking about us and wanted to hear how I managed to get pregnant via a medicine woman in the islands where we worked for awhile.

German, Chinese, Jewish, Christian, American guests at a Canadian worship last night.  That’s why I love our life, or, anyway, one of the reasons.