Driving, Family, Friends and Smorgasbord or Not?

Today we picked up our niece from her home near Mission and drove her to Cache Creek to meet up with her good friend from Quesnel and take them back to Mission, so that they can spend the weekend together. On the way home our car was filled with giggling, chatter and writing notes back and forth, as well as silly suggestions of making faces and waving to people as they approached our car. All I could do was smile and occasionally shake my head at the silliness. I was reminded of the youthful innocence of the mid-teens and just how wonderful it is to have a best friend, one that you can be silly with and share your life with; crushes, disappointments, joys, stuff about schoolmates, feelings etc. After our six and a half hour round trip we dropped Emily and Jade off at home and picked up Sara, Emily's sister.We then headed for Langley to have Chinese Food at our favourite little dive. We called our Aunt and Uncle to have them join us there, but when we arrived the restaurant was closed for the weekend to celebrate the Easter Weekend - good for them. The little Won Ton House is family owned and run and I am sure they work many weeks with little time off - so good for them; not so good for us. Chinese food is something that I get cravings for and it is hard to change the taste buds, so while we were waiting for our aunt and uncle we scooted over to another restaurant to see if it was open. To our delight it was, although after our experience I am not sure 'delight' is the right word. Anyways we went back to meet up with the rest of our party and then headed back to the other restaurant which is a smorgasbord restaurant. The food selection was plenty and we had our fill, but as we were sitting there visiting I began to watch people at the buffet table getting there food, what a mistake! I was appalled at the lack of etiquette, where do people learn manners from nowadays. The first ' I can't believe that person did that' was when one person filled their bowl of soup too full and the noodles and broth overflowed running over their hand and back into the pot. Aren't you suppose to fill your bowl off to the side of the pot not over the pot? This led to a conversation at the table about men wearing hats in the restaurant... aren't they suppose to remove hats when they eat? The longer we sat there the more we saw, I guess we should have looked away. The next appalling act was when a young family was at the buffet table, this woman picked up a steamed bun with her hands, broke it open, looked at it then put it back into the buffet container, leaving it for someone else to take, totally unaware that someone else already handled the food. She did this in front of her son, what does that teach him? My uncle had clear view of the mother while she sat at her table to eat and watched as she ate with her hands, I'm shocked!!! We were all glad we had gotten there earlier and were already finished eating - but makes you think doesn't it - what else did we miss? It was a colorful meal, we also had an older oriental gentleman who was dining alone try to fully engage our table in conversation with him, basically over talking any conversation we were trying to have. He would get up, get his food and return to talk to us some more. He told us about not being able to travel to the island because the ferries were cancelled, he has tickets so he planned to go tomorrow morning, he talked about the HST and Vanderzalm's fight against it. He told us about his mansion in Walnut Grove, that he lives in and told us several times that the food was good, a good price and we should eat lots so we don't have to eat tomorrow. He made a couple of attempts to engage others in the restaurant in his conversation but I guess we were just that much closer to him or maybe we looked non threatening. In the end he came to our table to say good bye and tell us how he had filled his pockets with twelve fortune cookies which he would eat tomorrow on the ferry. It was all very entertaining and was good for a few laughs. We ended our evening at MacDonald's for coffee as we watched Jeopardy and the torrential rains and winds outside. All in all a good day... especially the part about being able to spend time blessing our nieces and visiting with our aunt and uncle. So will I buffet again? Probably....but I might think twice.