Haggis and other commnication bloopers

So I thought my Spanglish was pretty bad……… yeah, my Chinese is MUCH worse!! We’ve had quite a few laughs over our communication with Sam in the past couple of weeks. And yes, he chose Sam as his American name. It was a toss-up between Zach and Sam, so he asked me to look up the meaning of both names. Zach means God Has Remembered. The webpage I used to look up “Sam” said that it meant overflowing joy.  I translated that to “great happiness”. It only took a second, his eyes lit up and he said, “oh yes, I like that one.” So Sam he became!

Google translator has been a huge blessing!! It’s easy to translate individual words that communicate an object or a thing, but communicating an idea or a thought is so much harder……and that’s where Google translator has been the biggest blessing.

A few days ago, Sam said he wanted to cook us some Chinese food (he really misses comfort foods from his native land). He told me that he had this great recipe that he’d cooked several times at home and he wanted to make it for us…..he said, “it has haggis and is so yummy.” If you don’t know what haggis is here’s the description compliments of Wikipedia “Haggis is a savoury pudding containing sheep’s pluck (heart, liver and lungs); minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased in the animal’s stomach and simmered for approximately three hours.”

It seemed slightly odd to me that his favorite food would be a Scottish dish, so I let it go. But a few days later he mentioned it again! So I questioned him on what “haggis” was exactly and he replied, “you know, E-G-G-S”. Haha, and all this time I was dreading eating sheep parts, but he just wanted to make eggs!!