Shopping and Salons—Wedding Prep.

Selma came in to my office and said, “Let’s go shopping! All the girls are going. We want to buy clothes for the wedding.” This meant that I could leave the office about 30 minutes early and get an appropriate outfit for the wedding, so I said yes. They said we’d be gone about an hour, but I should have known they were underestimating.  Ten minutes into the trip, I remembered that shopping is not one of my favorite things to do, and I was ready to say yes to any thing I was told to buy. We’d pop into one shop, and I’d see a thobe in an acceptable color (a thobe is a long piece of cloth like a sari but wrapped differently), and I’d say, “I like that one.” Then I’d be informed that it was for “big” women, not me. Does that mean “big” as in “old” or “big” as in “tall” or “big” as in “plus size”? I never figured it out. Eventually we landed on a piece of cloth that met with everyone’s approval, and I grabbed at the chance to be done, so I accepted. I thought we were done, but that was only the beginning.

I amused myself by admiring other merchandise. Observe the social-media abaya (long black dress for conservative girls). That Zuckerberg guy is working the advertising here in Khartoum.

 

Horrible photo of
 inside the market

First, we had to go get that piece of cloth chopped down to a length appropriate for my miserable size (too young, too short, or too skinny—still don’t know) and hemmed. Then the real hunt began—I had to get appropriate clothes to wear UNDER the thobe. At this point, the girls began to realize just how helpless I am.  I suggested just wearing a white tank top and leggings under it—that suggestion was met with horrified looks. White? With a green and gold sparkly thobe? Impossible. Cease to think it. It can ONLY be warn with a gold or green top over a black or olive-colored skirt (also, this shopping excursion was totally useful as a refresher course for the appropriate Arabic names for various shades of colors). And now that we had specifics in mind, our search became nearly impossible. I just gave up and followed them around as they imperiously informed shop-keepers throughout the entire market of our needs. They were going to make me buy shoes, but I was kind of having fun horrifying them with my terrible fashion sense by suggesting various types of shoes that I saw, ranging from comfortable ones that I probably would wear even though they wouldn’t match at all to terrifically ugly ones that I would never wear that would also not match at all. They gave up on me for the shoes. But I was not allowed to leave the dang market until I had bought an appropriate skirt (which no one will see anyway, since it will be under the those).

Dumb thobe photo of me

We rode home in a Bajaj because those guys are EVERYWHERE

After buying appropriate clothes, the next important thing to do is go to the salon. Maybe because we went on Thursday afternoon (their equivalent of Friday afternoon, i.e. weekend party preparation time) or maybe because it is a popular place, but that salon was packed to the gills. Women were fluttering around getting henna applied to their hands and feet and having their hair brushed and oiled and braided and henna-tattooing eyebrows on and applying extra slimy facial goo. I caused a stir as the lone foreign woman getting some appropriate black hair dye (what they use for henna tattoos here) drawn all over my hands. I also let them thread all the unwanted hair off my face, which amazed them as they don’t really have much extra hair anywhere, lucky ladies…

It PEELS off--better than nail polish. Definitely as good as peeling strips of dried glue
off your hand, if I remember correctly from the last time I did crafts ( 20+ years ago)

  

The scariest thing was the gas burner in the middle of the room, heating all the hair utensils—curling irons and straighteners. True confession time: I have never owned a curling iron because I have never successfully used one on myself or anyone/thing else. Although, I can cleverly snap it open and closed like a crocodile devouring its prey (and it occurs to me suddenly that maybe THIS is why I associate curling irons with pain and death? Or maybe it is being accidentally burned by them when Mom used to insist on curling my hair for church?). Forget straighteners. I won’t even pretend I know what to do with those, not that my hair needs help being straight… One time I did buy these travel hot rollers because, well, they were TRAVEL SIZE (that is an almost irresistible trait that can convince me to buy things I would never need because-hey!-they fit in my suitcase, so why not?). After several months of using them exactly NEVER times, I gave them to my sister who is not mystified by metal pins that fit somehow over plastic cylinders of electric heat death.  So, I no longer had something extra I had to fit in my suitcase (travel size or not) and she had some travel-sizeable hair accessories that she could fit in her suitcase—win/win. Anyway, these ladies were using some serious fire-powered hair tools that scared the crap out of me. It really terrifies me to see steam rising off people’s hair. I just don’t see how that can be OK.  Hair is flammable, right? At least no one caught on fire on my watch. I even got a few sneaky photos of the whole set-up for you, dear readers. And getting photos in a salon full of Arab women, terrified of being accidentally seen on someone’s social media and then snagged and put in a pornographic film somewhere on the internet, is not an easy feat. But I did it. See for yourself.

 

So, properly henna-ed, depilatoried, and outfitted in a sparkly thobe, I was considered wedding-ready. Just got to drive 5 hours to get there…

Me, admiring the finished product in the car on the way to the wedding

Wedding picture preview

Killing Time in Uganda and Rwanda

This doesn't have anything to do with anything,
but I like how Ugandan shopkeepers don't feel a
garment is properly advertised until you can see how far
it is capable of going over the hips. And this guy was so happy
thinking I was taking his photo.

I was always taught by my very organized family to plan ahead when buying plane tickets. So far, in the past few months, when I’ve sort of put that advice into action (sort of—they plan several months in advance for plane tickets, and I was only managing weeks, but still—for me, that’s good), it has backfired on me. I don’t think there is one plane ticket that I have bought recently that I haven’t had to change, sometimes more than once. For my tickets to the US tomorrow night, I’m on “third time’s a charm!” change.  Naturally, this has added up in airline fees, but fortunately, my wonderful company is taking on those charges since the changes are a direct result of me working for them in an environment that hasn’t yet reached the stage of development when one can begin to make educated guesses about the future.  Another result of that result is that I’m going to help my poor pregnant little (age-wise) sister who just got put on bed-rest last week (she’s having twins) and is maybe needing a tiny bit of help, seeing as she also has an almost-four year old and an almost-two year old and her husband is deployed. Some people don’t plan well, and these are the US military and my sister. Though, my sister is actually usually a genius planner, but some things are (mostly) beyond her control. And even though I didn't make it on her blog list of things she’s happy about in spite of the stress of being on bed rest (yellow flowers and helpful friends and such), I’m giving her a shout-out here (I don’t hold grudges because I’m so much more mature than she is—2.5 years will do that to you), and you should read her blog for deep and insightful posts (which you will NOT find here) and cute pictures of her babies. And for me, I think bed rest could be super-fun, especially since I discovered Amazon.com’s return policy allows you to return a book for a full refund in less than 7 days. And since it never takes me that long to read a book, if I have decent internet connections, Amazon is like my personal library.  But before you get all huffy at me for finding loopholes in systems (Yes, I'm talking to you--my stuffy, rule-following sisters whom I love and adore), I spend PLENTY of money on Amazon that I don’t get back, and they are still making quite a bit of profit off me.

You can see why I
got tired of this, right?

Anyway, circumstances being what they were, I was in Uganda for a week+ with no definite plans.  So, after a few days of hanging out, getting sunburnt by Lake Victoria and spending way too much Neverthirst money in expensive hotels, I decided I would save the organization some dough and instead use my own hard-earned money, which I have diligently saved thanks to Amazon.com and the fact that there is mostly nothing to buy in South Sudan, to go to Rwanda. Why? Because I could. So I did. Why not?

First day in Kigali! Note the flesh-colored band-aids
that don't match my flesh. I'm clearly a freak here.
Also, those band-aids were as terrible as American ones.
Hansaplast are the only goodband-aids!

I landed in Rwanda without much of a plan, but I had found a hotel on Trip Advisor, which gave free airport pick-up, and that is the main kind of planning that I do.  Some day if I ever write about my solo-backpacking trip through SEAsia, you can see that planning a hotel ahead of time is a really big deal for me (OK, let’s be honest, that’s probably not going to happen, so just go ahead and believe that I deserve a pat on the back for planning ahead that much). At said hotel, I posted on Facebook about being in Rwanda and waited for suggestions to come in. They did. Especially one very useful one from a friend of my other currently non-pregnant sister (yes, she’s also my friend too) who hooked me up with one of her friends in Kigali. In spite of being sick, Julie picked me up and brought me to her house for tea and planning my Rwanda tourism strategy. She gave me advice and information about Kigali and convinced a friend in Musanze (town up in the mountains outside of Kigali) to take me in for a night up there. Then her lovely roommate, Jamie, took me to the doctor to look at some weird festering sores on my leg that they agreed looked creepy. I’m pretty sure they started in South Sudan, got worse in Uganda, and apparently they would have gotten even worse if I hadn’t gone to the doctor, so thank those ladies that I am still alive. And that’s how I spent my first hours in Kigali. Adventist (I can’t get away from these guys! Good thing I like them) Doc said, “You have a bacterial staph infection. If it gets more into your bloodstream, you could get very sick.” Or he said something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention to the details. He then got one lucky nurse to clean out all the sores. I’m pretty sure she loved it because she was very diligent and thorough and used much hydrogen peroxide with great force. Then he added another pound to my baggage weight by prescribing two kinds of pills and an antibiotic cream. I’m like a grandma with all the medication I’m taking. I need to get one of those SMTWTFS pill boxes for all my meds. I’m really not good at remembering to take them at the right time. Hopefully that is not crucial to my complete recovery. I took Jamie out to lunch afterwards to thank her for her graciousness in coming with me (making me go) to the doctor. I mean, how many people that you’ve never met in your life would you take to the doctor to get their weird skin disease treated? But that is what you do for fellow expats in need of medical attention. Then you spend a good part of your lunchtime conversation talking of other health issues you’ve had that most people wouldn’t consider proper for mealtime discussion, but these are ways you bond with others here.

Kigali

                                 

On the road to Musanze

                                 

The next day I went up to Musanze, a beautiful town up in a ring of several dormant volcanoes, where rich tourists will pay $750/day to see famous silver-back gorillas. I’m not that rich, and while Neverthirst has been more than generous with me, I didn’t feel that was something I could charge to the company anyway. So I hung out with a lovely family there who took me up one of the volcanoes and sat in a little restaurant while I went for a rainy hike up to the gorilla fence. I didn’t see any gorillas, but I did see some beautiful scenery and a eucalyptus tree that a gorilla had been gnawing on. It was a nice excursion, and a good excuse to see a different part of the country.

Musanze volcanos

Even their farms are beautiful--these red flowers are beans.

TCKs are cool! So are fake gorillas.

                                   

                                         

This is me sucking beauty
in through my giant eyeballs

This country is really extremely beautiful—yes, I say that about everywhere from rolling green tea gardens of Indonesia to endless sandy deserts of Yemen, but I really mean it. Riding the bus up to Musanze, I noticed I was opening my eyes as wide as possible as if I could suck all the beauty into my soul through my eyeballs. I realized I did this years ago while on that solo backpacking trip through SEAsia. It’s weird, and I look like one of those strange monkey-things with huge staring eyes. One thing that really stands out is the lack of trash anywhere. This is amazing to me, having grown up in Indonesia and spent time in India and other places where the road=acceptable place to throw trash. I remarked on this, but the ladies taking me around the country sighed about it as almost symbolic of a nation that is keeping up appearances with a pristine environment, while behind that beauty is a country still struggling to deal with the after-effects of the genocide of 1994.

Musanze rainy volcano day

In 1994, I was in sixth grade. I remember Ben Lawson standing up in front of the class to give a report on the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. His junior-high monotone-presentation voice jumped a little with a boy’s inevitable thrill over saying the words “chopping with machetes.” Still, I remember his horror and my own at the thought of something like that happening. To me, it seemed fantastic—not fantastic/wonderful, but fantastic/impossible/unreal. I never thought that almost 20 years later I would be visiting the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. But I never forgot his presentation either. And I have no idea what current event I spoke about for my presentation.

Kigali

I remembered sixth grade-me as I walked around that museum. I didn’t want to go, but I never considered not going. It feels disrespectful to enjoy a country without remembering the reality of its history. I went to the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia when I was there for the same reason. It is not pleasant to see displays of skulls and leg bones—big and small and clean and whitened. It wrecks you in a way you can’t prepare for even though you felt like you should have tried. Seeing photos of children who were shot or bludgeoned or slashed or burned to death is not easy. Under cherished family photos of beautiful little children who would later be brutally murdered, the families shared details of their lives: their favorite foods, best friends, favorite activities. One 15 month-old’s favorite words was “auntie,” she was burned to death. Another 9 month old child was slashed by a machete while in his mother’s arms. You can’t get over these stories. Even as I loved wandering a new country, enjoying the scenery, I couldn’t get images of streets filled with bodies or mass graves out of my mind.  Seeing these things reminds me of the incredible evil that we as humans are capable of. Anyone who thinks he or she could never do something like that is arrogant or naïve.  We all hope we would be one of the few that stood up for the victims, but it’s probably more likely that we wouldn’t be. The fact that this kind of evil exists in our world in many places, not just Rwanda, shows our desperate need for a Savior. We call behavior like this animalistic, but I don’t think animals generally kill each other for fun or from deep hatred. We do. And it’s not religion or church that we need—in fact, many good church-goers participated in the massacres, including priests and parishioners. When people went to a church, believing that others who claimed to follow the God who loves the world would help them, they were murdered instead.

Coming back down the mountain

As I walked around the city and I could remember back to my sixth grade year, and I knew that people my age or older and even many younger cannot have forgotten what happened.  But walking around the picture-perfect streets of Kigali it is hard to imagine that once the streets were filled with bodies and the smell of death filled the air. It was hard for me not to wonder when looking at people on the bus, in the markets, walking around the mall what they experienced. What side were they on? Do they still think about what happened or do they push away those memories?  I was told that it is actually illegal to ask people their tribal background.  I don’t necessarily think that it’s illegal to talk about what happened, but aside from the memorial, it felt like the events of 1994 never happened. A short video clip on Rwandan Air talked about the new government and the developing nation—a land of a thousand hills and a million smiles. "The government is tough on corruption. Rwanda is developing as an example to neighboring countries." While all that is true, I don’t think it is ultimately beneficial for anyone—Rwanda or the rest of the world—to pretend that the only obstacle the Rwandan people have overcome is inefficient governance. The way to get beyond the horror of those days isn’t to refuse to talk about it. I can only see one way to true healing, both for the victims and the perpetrators, and it is not something that would come naturally to us. We need to know all the time, deep in our souls, not just when sitting in our pews at church, the God of Stephen. The one who gave him the ability to say, “Father forgive them” as he was being stoned to death by his own people.  It may seem easy for me to say that, not having watched my family members murdered, not having had to run for my life or suffer from horrible injuries inflicted on me by people I trusted. But it’s not me saying this. It’s the Man who was betrayed by His friends, condemned by people whose lives He saved, and murdered by an immoral religious establishment in collusion with a corrupt dictatorship. I think He has the right to tell humanity the way to find healing from the violence we wreak on each other. The Genocide Memorial had quotes from survivors of other genocides (the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, massacre in Bosnia), and one quote on one of the boards said, “We don’t want revenge because then they will take revenge again on our children and our children on their grandchildren and so on and it will never stop.”  Being able to restrain oneself from taking revenge is admirable, but being able to recognize the pain and agony that someone caused you and to forgive them, that is life-changing.

Kigali, mass grave, memorial flowers

May God bless the beautiful people of Rwanda in their beautiful country and bring them true peace and healing and hope for a better future. I hope I get to go back someday.

                        

Something I wrote a while ago and never posted...

Yemeni Product Names

I can’t really blame the odd English names on Yemen alone. Anyone who has ever travelled in Asia (probably Africa too, but I only know Asia) will have noticed the many ingenious English product names. I assume that the thought process is that English is cool or at least useful for business and so products named in English are cool or at least make good business sense. I do remember one intrepid entrepreneur from our church in Indonesia who purposefully named his sandals “Konichiwa” and made them look Japanese-ish by placing odd looking cartoon characters with large mouths jumping around the plastic packaging. I remember him saying that people thought that Indonesian-made products were inferior to foreign-made ones and so he would make a better profit with his faux-Japanese flipflops. My mom and I recently purchased matching Konichiwa sandals and they still fill us with a spirit of Hello Kitty and Pikachu. So, Pak Karmen’s desire to present his product as “foreign” and therefore “awesome” might be a motivation for the English monikers attached to random goods I find in the supermarket here.

Laundry soap is a product that you might not think needs an English name to sell it. You would be wrong. Here the favored brands are “FasClean,” “White Cat,” and “Wild Cat.” We’ll take “FasClean” to start with. I am guessing that “FasClean” is supposed to suggest to the fluent English speakers buying laundry soap (no one who does not speak English buys laundry soap of course) that this type of soap cleans with lightning speed. You only need leave your clothes soaking in the water a few minutes and –voila- done. Although, I read the Arabic underneath the English to see if it was translated thus in Arabic, but it was merely transliterated so I can’t be positive that I am indeed understanding the meaning correctly. Still, for people like me who frequently forget that they put their clothes in a bucket of water and need to scrub them, squeeze them, and hang them out on the line, “fascleaning” is not as necessary. I would prefer something like “No-Scrub” detergent, along the lines of “no-rub” contact solution that would take some of the effort out of hand-washing my clothes. But honestly, I am not the most diligent of hand-washers. I tend to throw things in a bucket with soap, swish them around, forget about them for a few hours, come back, dump the water on the floor to mop it, squeeze a bit of the excess wetness out, and then sling the clothes over the line to dry. It’s already hot enough here that it doesn’t matter how much I squeeze out, they’re going to dry anyway. And no, I did not forget to include the step where I rinse the soap out of the clothes because I don’t, in fact, do that. I just leave the clothes in long enough for all the soap to dissolve out.

Sadly, neither “White Cat” nor “Wild Cat” are “no-scrub” detergents, but they both do have horrifying pictures of ferocious-looking cats on them. I’m not sure why a cat was chosen for their mascot. Is the idea that if you can get a mangy, flea-bitten cat who rolls in the dirt and eats garbage to look white with this laundry soap then you can clean anything? Or is the idea that this laundry soap cleans with the power of an insane rabid feline more what the manufacturer is going for? Either way, one should never leave the package lying out unattended. If you glance at it in the dark, say, while you’re on the toilet at night, it can look pretty creepy.

Another thing that brings me joy is the Indonesian on my cleaning solution. This product is tri-lingual, catering to Arabic-speaking Indonesians living in gulf countries where they must communicate with the English-speaking Indians doing all the outside work. My cleaning solution boasts in the fact that it contains “SPF.” At first, I was pleased to know that my countertops in my windowless room would all be protected from sun damage, until I read that, in this case, “SPF” means “spot protection formula.” I suppose it is good to protect the spots on my furniture as well. Al muhim: it is easier to read Indonesian than Arabic, and I was able to see that it is possible to use this fancy “SPF” spray in my kitchen, living room, bed room, and/or bathroom for maximum cleanliness. Cleanliness, it may surprise you to know given my sad reputation as a domestic novice, I appreciate greatly. I appreciate it even more after living with many many girls who don’t realize that garbage disposals have never been brought to Yemen and you can’t throw bits of food in a sink and expect them to just disappear. They only do disappear because that weird foreign girl gets tired of having crap in the sink where she brushes her teeth and cleans them. Also, throwing water on the floor doesn’t keep it as clean as keeping a clean floor dry so as not to track mud all over the bathroom. Random dark thoughts I have…

Another Indonesian thing I use consistently is my Ciptadent toothpaste. This toothpaste informs me boldly that it can “menguatkan email gigi.” I guessed from the context that in this case “email” is “enamel” and the toothpaste is strengthening that not the personal electronic address of my teeth, because I must admit that I didn’t know previously the word for “enamel” in Bahasa and sometimes still when I look at it, it makes me think strange thoughts. Still, that toothpaste is amazing as it is contains “multivitamins and microactive foam.” The foam I have noticed, and recently, after purchasing very expensive vitamins at the local pharmacy in an attempt to balance nutrition with the stress that is making my hair fall out, I considered eating the toothpaste in lieu of purchasing more vitamins. It would be cheaper and more efficient, adding that “two-in-one” value to one of my daily activities.

In conclusion, I will continue to enjoy my “Freshly Peanut Butter” and my “London Dairy” ice cream even if they are Yemen products with fake English names because, while they’re not Peter Pan or Eddy’s, they’re not so bad.

The Great Thanksgiving Melon Pumpkin Adventure-how I saved Thanksgiving

This week there have been two recurring themes in Emily's and my lives: Thanksgiving is ruined or Thanksgiving is saved! Can't find pumpkin pie filling...Thanksgiving is ruined. Find pumpkins...Thanksgiving is saved! No canned green beans...ruined. Frozen broccoli...saved! Burned rolls...ruined. Successful pies made in glass bowls instead of pie pans...saved!

This week has certainly been a shopping adventure for us. We hoped to find pumpkin pie filling in cans somewhere in Beirut, but we lucked out. Still, we did find a beautiful pumpkin that I'll tell you about later. Since last year I'd had to use a real pumpkin, I wasn't too worried about doing again this year. Dreading it, yes, because it is a lot of work, but now I knew it would be ok. Also, I was greatly cheered by the presence of Hello Panda in the grocery store.

Probably our biggest shopping adventure was the saga of the Turkey. Naturally, we assumed that the butcher area at our local grocery store would sell turkeys. And when I asked him for turkey, he had it available. He politely asked how many slices we wanted. When I told him we wanted a whole turkey, he looked confused for a brief moment, and then brightened up and offered us the whole package of processed turkey sandwich meat. No, we said, we want a whole one...we shaped a turkey carcass with our hands in the air to make our point. He smiled and brought out a package that we thought must be what we wanted. Emily noted that you could see the legs in the shape of the package. I agreed that it looked right, but I felt vaguely suspicious of it. I told the guy that I thought that was right, but I wanted to feel it first. He looked at me with concern, but handed it over. To test it, I gave it a little squeeze. It squished. Obviously not what we wanted. We explained that we wanted to put it in the oven. The butcher shook his head sadly and offered us a whole chicken instead. We were on the point of accepting it when the butcher's assistant motioned for us to follow him. He took us out to the frozen vegetable section where they had a wide selection of ridiculously over-priced butterball turkeys! Thanksgiving was saved!!

Later that night we got out the pumpkin purchased earlier in Beirut. Emily put on Avonlea, so that we could enjoy old TV shows and marvel at the abilities of Canadian child actresses. Then we went to work. OK, I have to confess, I allowed Emily to do most of the work. I mean, if she's willing, why not? Soon, though, we noticed something a bit odd about our beautiful pumpkin. First, it smelled like a melon and second, it was greenish inside. Scott began to insist that we'd gotten some weird hybrid pumpkin-melon hybrid. He hinted that he would never have made the same mistake (although we had earlier given him the opportunity to go out and buy them for us and he had declined). We worried that it wouldn't work for our pie and bread, but chopped away anyway. We decided to risk it, and amazingly I can testify that the bread and pie were successful. There were some lumps, but that was because we didn't cook it long enough and we had to beat it out by hand because we have no blender. I actually had to sift through the pumpkin pie batter with my fingers to find the biggest lumps. (I didn't tell you that before, Emily, but don't worry-my hands were clean.)

Meanwhile, Emily decided to prove to the world that she is capable of cooking EVERYTHING required for a complete Thanksgiving feast by herself. I mean, it's possible that I could be expected to chip in a bit, but really she knows that the kitchen isn't exactly my happy place. I agreed to sit in there with her and chop and stir, which I did. (Yet another example of me saving Thanksgiving.) She made broccoli casserole, corn casserole, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, pineapple salad, green bean casserole, crescent rolls, dressing, and turkey. Also pecan pie with no corn syrup. It was all amazing-mostly because she did it all herself. I tried to help out by offering to let her use instant mashed potato stuff that I have at my house from its previous owner. But when I mentioned this, Emily looked at me like I'd suggested to let her roast up her cat instead of getting a turkey.

So in all, it was a successful Thanksgiving. We ate until we were very full and then laid around on the couch watching stupid things on TV. I'll put up photos on facebook soon. Those photos will include the ones we took when decorating the house for Christmas as well. That was also an exciting time involving stringing popcorn, making snowflakes and homemade clay ornaments. I think I'm going to get a job with Hallmark selling a new line of Christmas ornaments entitled: random animals eating Santa Claus. So far we have a crocodile and a whale eating up the old fat guy. We'll do some market research to decide which animal is next for the collection. Precious Moments? What is that crap?

Hello Panda!

"Hello Panda is a brand of Japanese biscuits (cookies), manufactured by Meiji Seika. Each biscuit consists of a small hollow shortbread layer, filled with either vanilla, strawberry, peanut butter or chocolate filling; chocolate is the most commonly available variety. Recently a yellow-boxed version containing the biscuits with a chocolate shell (instead of the usual shortbread) was released.
It was first released in Japan during the Summer of 1979. Printed on the biscuits are cartoon style depictions of giant pandas; presumably this is where the product derives its name.
Hello Panda was originally baked in Japan by Meiji Seika, but production later began in Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia.^[1] The Singapore bakery facilities started producing other Meiji products in 1974. The biscuits are exported to most developed countries, such as the United States.
The biscuits are commonly sold in a tall, hexagonal box with 2 oz or 57.5 g. In some countries, Hello Panda biscuits are available in small 21 and 35g aluminum pouches, as well as 350g boxes and 450g tins."


The article above was from that acclaimed website Wikipedia to which all dedicated scholars must go at various times in their lives when they desire some important piece of knowledge that cannot be found anywhere else. In this case, I'm cutting out the middle man for all of those scholars. I already know what Hello Panda is, and, true to my generous nature, I thought I'd share with all of you the joys of this cute snack little from Japan.

I discovered Hello Panda while living and studying in Jordan. Jordan does not completely fit into the "developed countries" list that Wikipedia mentioned in the second to last paragraph of the article above, but Jordan is moving up in the world, and evidence of that is the availability of Hello Panda in most small convenience stores in the capital city of Amman. The delectable flavor of this scrumptious treat is described above so I do not need to go into much more detail, but truly the Japanese outdid themselves with this one. Hello Panda certainly kicks Hello Kitty in her non-existent tail. I mean, does Hello Kitty come with chocolate in her face? I don't think so... You can see that Hello Panda is vastly superior to a great number of other Hello Animals. So naturally, when I left Jordan behind, I was very sad to say goodbye to my Hello Panda friend. Until yesterday when my life re-gained its meaning.

Yesterday, after an hour of driving around in circles trying to find an entrance to City Mall that was not under construction, we finally made it in. Scott had been waiting for us in the mall for several hours at this point. His original intent was to watch a nerdy Star Wars cartoon that Emily and I, being the true film connoisseurs that we are, refused to watch with him. Instead we went to the travel agent where I was planning to buy a ticket to the States for my sister's wedding. I didn't end up getting the ticket there due to a small error on the travel agent's part where she told me the ticket was $380 cheaper than it actually was. I ended up buying the cheaper ticket online because I am a nice person who tries to save her sister money even though that sister didn't have the courtesy to wait for me to get home before she decided to get married. At least this way I get to see her early... As it turned out, the geek-movie was not playing contrary to internet information (not everything on the internet is as reliable as Wikipedia). So Scott went on to the grocery store to wait for us to come back from what was supposed to be a short trip. Several hours later we met up with him in the store, relieved (Emily was anyway) to find he had not yet spent all their hard-earned money on random crap. He was also relieved to see us and proceeded to play grocery store tour guide for us. He has since contacted an agent and will soon be publishing a map and book detailing the finer points of the store layout and product availability.

Happy to have companionship again, Scott quickly ushered us towards the shining aisles. "Here we have Taco Bell salsa! And here on your right there are Fritos! Look up to your left-Poptarts!" We ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the appropriate moments, and Emily, competent housewife that she is, selected the least over-priced items that will make great meals for when I come over accidentally on purpose at dinner time. I admit to being tempted by things like salsa (a staple food for me that fulfills the vegetable requirement on my food pyramid), but I am also almost as cheap as the man who raised me. (We never got to buy cheese puffs because you got more grams for your money if you bought pretzels.) But then, while Scott and Emily were looking at some kind of sauce that I didn't know existed, I saw it!! A beam of light illuminated them on the shelf of assorted crackers and cookies. That's right! HELLO PANDA!!! I did a little happy dance and began to sing the song inspired by Hello Panda right there in the store while Scott and Emily pretended not to know me. I selected a bag of individual Panda packs and then floated after them throughout the store, no longer minding the monotony of the Great Search for Quaker Oats by Emily that is still going on today. Occasionally I would burst into song whenever I glanced down lovingly at the package of Hello Pandas cradled in my arms like a baby.

The real test came later in the car when I, being the selfless person that I am, tried to share my Hello Panda joy with Scott and Emily. For some reason, they were hesitant to trust my cultured taste buds' testimony. They claim it was the chocolate jam-filled marshmallows that I made them try. I maintain that those are an amazing feat of edible chemical engineering. But eventually Emily agreed that Hello Pandas are quite tasty. I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm, but Emily can't help not being as refined as I am. She grew up in America and thus derives her joy from such mundane things as Reese's Cups. Reese's cups...they don't even have a face!