Word: understandingly
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...thing that everyone's afraid of is someone spitting in their food. It's very rare for waiters to do that. My view is that there's no fun in making anyone sick. So don't put Ex-Lax in the coffee or Metamucil in the soup. But I understand the compulsion, because I have thought about it. I'm a pretty reasonable guy with self-control, but there are people with less self-control, and they've done...
...read when I ask for help; she rolls her eyes when I ask for water, and she drops down my food with a tension that hangs in the air like the subtropical humidity here. I again give up on figuring out the menu, agree to something I don't understand, and end up with bowl of Ramen and pork chops. I wash it down with a painfully cloying iced tea. When I have a question in the bill, the employees seem to barely suppress the urge to explode at me. All romantic notions of lingering to sip and chat...
...travelers realize, people are the same, too. Maybe they speak a language I don’t yet significantly understand, maybe their customs are something I have to work to emulate, but the things that matter aren’t different at all. The lines highlighting my host mother’s mouth suggest my own mom’s smile, and the hands of the shepherd’s wife remind me of my grandmother’s. As my Chinese lags far behind proficient, the facial expressions and gestures that I rely on for communication cross all kinds...
...teacher’s translation helped me understand his words, but his gestures conveyed his anger, powerless as it was. He told us he agreed with the policies, but their execution was corrupt. I asked my teacher whether this particular government-citizen interaction was a problem elsewhere in China, but he told me this punishing unfairness was particularly directed at Inner Mongolia’s minority population...
...over the past four summers, melting away like the cubes of glacier--dating back to 1816--that the scientists drink in glasses of whiskey at a farewell party. As it warms, we'll probably lose more, but the hope is that through projects like NEEM, we will finally understand our climatic past before meeting our uncertain future. The scientists here think we're running out of time--a concept that loses all meaning through the nightless arctic summer. I force myself to go to bed at about 11:30 and try to sleep despite the light. I wake up once...