At the end of May we left our home in Suzhou, China to spend the summer in the U.S. where we landed in Columbus, Ohio, bought a dented Ford Explorer and hit the open road. It wasn’t long before my kids began to grin and poke each other, speaking out of the sides of their mouths as we bought gas or waited for a table.

“She’s a two.”
“He’s definitely a four.”
“EIGHT! Did you see that, an EIGHT.”

I had to ask. “What do you mean?”
“It’s the number of Chinese people they had to eat to get that big.”
“That’s so rude, you shouldn’t say that,” although the woman who did my nails in Tennessee was absolutely a twelve. Read More