forum Wild and Free (closed)

Started January 25, 2022 by @DancingWithMyDemons business

tune

J just walked in, announced that Latvians are hobbits and walked back out.

Wha-? Why are Latvians Hobbits?

Okay. I have the story.
So they were talking about traditions in class, and the teacher's husband is Latvian. She was giving an example of a tradition Latvians have - that they probably barely celebrate in Latvia anymore, but the Latvian population in Quebec does so with great gusto - called Jani. [there are two accents, but I'm too lazy to type them. It's pronounced Yawn-yee] They basically wear these great, big bulky flower wreaths [like literal wreaths] and the men wear even bigger wreaths of oak [or some other tree] branches on their heads. Mostly all you can see of that are the leaves, though. They go around in a clump, a hundred or so people, and go over to one of the hosts' houses. They drink beer, insult each other back and forth in Latvian, and have food and music and dancing. Then they do the same at another house and do the houses of everyone present.
J's teacher said that she didn't understand anything, and when she first saw the wreaths, she thought Okay, Latvians are hobbits.

Okay, I find this both charming and hilarious.

A, R and J just walked by wearing branches on their heads. I think they like the sound of Jani too.

There's a weird Nova Scotian one called "Mumming," where [only the adults, mind you] dress up so nobody can recognize them and go to their friends' houses. The friends are required to give them food and alcohol without knowing who they are.

Huh.

Lol, I might do that one one of these days bc why not.

And then there's French-Canadian one where you go to like five churches in a single day, have a huge dinner and sit around waiting for midnight so you're "allowed" to go visit your friends for Christmas. You open your presents once you're with them, and end up going to sleep at like 6 am - and then you have to get ready for the Christmas service. You get like 2 hours of sleep. On the plus side, small children learn very early how to survive with little sleep.

Oh no.
I shove a pile of recipes in your hands Hide these. J's doing a project on culture, and OF COURSE she wants to bring food, and of COURSE she picked spinach fatayer. I mean, it's delicious, but my mom and dad don't know how to make it, and Teta's way up north visiting people.
I am not wasting hours of my life making food for a bunch of fourth-graders, half of whom will inevitably not like it.

I can't so church. Not my type of place. And that is true.

I look around, panicked, then toss them into the air. They disappear with a small pop Is that good?

We go, but SIX in twenty-four hours is far too many.

That is very good, yes.
And why do they have 35 ten-year-olds in one class? That is too many to make food for, and too many for any sane teacher to handle.

Oh, Jesus H. Christ. . . that's too much peopling.

I laugh Okay, good.
Idk. Ask the school.

It is very much too much peopling.

J is making me hungry.
She's also making me realize that I have absolutely no idea how to spell a lot of my favourite foods.

Yea. . . Idk how some people do it.

Eat something then.
Like what?

I did.

Like… Wara enab has a K somewhere, what I thought was m3ksi [the 3 is to replace the ha letter in Arabic, which sounds pretty much like exhaling really hard to fog up glass] is mehchi and apparently, kebaba isn't even spelt anything close to that?? And WHY are there only two vowels in [this is the correct spelling, I don't know what I thought it was, but not this] knafeh? You pronounce it kuh-na-feh.
Etc, etc.

"Did"?

Ah. . . weird words.

I mean, I did eat.

What time is it up there?

Just after six pm.

5:06:35 PM down here.

Denny, I told my sister the minute in Africa joke, and she said "And you can help stop it! Donate today!"
How do you stop minutes?

I'd assume you'd have to stop hours first.

You can stop minutes in Africa by killing all the clocks. Duh.

Are you implying that Africa has sentient clocks?
Those would be fun. Literal alarm clocks. They would walk up and actually alarm you.
We need one for Danny.

Well I'd assume time itself is alive. Kill everything that shows time in a specific area, you've effectively killed time there.

Huh.
Farewell, Not-Big-Ben. It was nice knowing you.

I'm not killing British time, I'm killing African time.