Esta semana es recreativa.
Interesante lo de los juegos.
Me recordó mi niñez.
Los adultos siempre jugaban cartas. Era un medio de distracción.
A mi nunca me gustaron los juegos. Me pasaba lo contrario, me aburría.
Veía a los adultos disfrutar y no entendía el por qué.
Recuerdo que la abuela española, de una amiga, hacía señas cuando jugaban por equipo. A mi eso si me hacía gracia. Ver a la abuela y que solo el que formaba parte de su equipo la entendía. Pero ella muy astuta de todas formas trataba de hacerlas cuando el equipo contrario no la veía.
-¿Adivinan?-
Siempre ganaba el equipo de la abuela.
Por lo general ese juego, con las barajas españolas, siempre lo jugaban más los hombres. Pero la abuela siempre se apuntaba, de primera, para la competencia. A ella eso no la incomodaba. Siempre era la única mujer que jugaba......
Después pude entender que había otros tipos de juegos.
Aparentemente los naipes se inventaron en China, los usaban las mujeres para distraerse del aburrimiento.
Esto me hace recordar un día de Navidad......
Un 25 de diciembre fuimos a visitar a una compañera de estudios, de origen chino, era otra cultura. Al llegar nos sirvieron galletas chinas que habían horneado. Muy sabrosas!!!!
A nosotros nos pareció que los padres estaban enfadados por la visita. A continuación vimos y escuchamos a los padres, de nuestra amiga, hablar en chino y ella se molestó.
No entendimos hasta que nos explico:
La estaban obligando a visitar a unos paisanos y ella no quería. Luego accedió con la condición de que nosotros (todos sus visitantes) fuéramos en combo a realizar la visita de cortesía. Nunca nos imaginamos haciendo eso.....
Fue una experiencia extraña. El dueño de la casa, chino, la esposa de Australia. Una combinación extraña para nosotros, pensamos.....
Nos recibieron a todo el grupo. Estaban felices por la visita. Allí cenamos carne a la parrilla. Era una casa enorme situada al norte de la ciudad donde vivíamos.
Allí entendimos que a los chinos les gusta el juego....y bastante. Parece ser que era gente de dinero. Apostaban cierta cantidad de dinero. En eso consistía su diversión. Tenían 2 salas para diferentes equipos de juego. Eso nunca lo entendimos. Tampoco nos atrevimos a preguntar nada sobre el asunto....
Nosotros ni comentamos. Ellos nos invitaron a participar y ahí decidimos que era hora de marcharnos......No queríamos meternos en cosas que ni remotamente sabíamos.
Al final de los años comentamos este episodio de nuestras vidas como una anécdota más de juventud. Lo que era toda una molestia, para nuestra amiga, resultó ser una nueva experiencia donde compartimos con diferentes culturas de manera inesperada.
ENGLISH VERSION by https://www.deepl.com/es/translator
This week is recreational.
Interesting about the games.
It reminded me of my childhood.
Adults always played cards. It was a means of distraction.
I never liked games. The opposite happened to me, I was bored.
I saw adults enjoying themselves and I didn't understand why.
I remember that the Spanish grandmother of a friend of mine used to make signs when they played as a team. That was funny to me. Seeing the grandmother and that only the one who was part of her team understood her. But she was very clever anyway, she tried to do it when the other team didn't see her.
-Guess what?
Grandma's team always won.
Usually that game, with the Spanish cards, was always played more by men. But Grandma always signed up, first and foremost, for the competition. That didn't bother her. She was always the only woman who played .......
Later I could understand that there were other types of games.
Apparently playing cards were invented in China, used by women to distract themselves from boredom.
This reminds me of a Christmas day......
One December 25th we went to visit a fellow student, of Chinese origin, it was another culture. When we arrived we were served Chinese cookies that they had baked. Very tasty!!!!
It seemed to us that the parents were angry about the visit. Next we saw and heard the parents, of our friend, speaking Chinese and she became annoyed.
We didn't understand until she explained:
They were forcing her to visit some countrymen and she didn't want to. Then she agreed on the condition that we (all her visitors) would go as a combo for the courtesy visit. We never imagined ourselves doing that.....
It was a strange experience. The owner of the house, Chinese, the wife from Australia. A strange combination for us, we thought.....
They welcomed the whole group. They were happy for the visit. There we had grilled meat for dinner. It was a huge house located north of the city where we lived.
There we understood that Chinese people like gambling....y quite a lot. It seems that they were money people. They gambled a certain amount of money. That was their fun. They had 2 rooms for different gambling equipment. We never understood that. We didn't dare to ask anything about it either ....
We didn't even comment. They invited us to participate and we decided it was time to leave...... We didn't want to get involved in things we didn't even remotely know about.
At the end of the years we commented on this episode of our lives as just another anecdote of our youth. What was such a nuisance, for our friend, turned out to be a new experience where we shared with different cultures in an unexpected way.