Dinner With the Lors by Kayley

On our second day in Paris, my family and I Metroed over to the Chinese side of Paris to visit Mommy's cousins at their restaurant. We had been invited to have dinner at their restaurant that they have owned for about twenty-five years to meet them. Mommy hadn't seen her cousins in a long time and in some cases she hadn't met them at all.

We arrived thirty minutes early for the dinner, because we weren't sure if the dinner party was at seven o'clock or seven thirty, so we got there at seven o'clock. In our spare thirty minutes, we walked around the block and sat on a bench in a toddler play ground because we were really tired from sight seeing I Paris a few hours earlier. At seven thirty we walked across the street to La Lune ( Mommy's cousins Asian restaurant) and sat down at the back of the restaurant to wait for the rest of the party to arrive. Robert, the owner of the restaurant added a bunch more tables to ours so that it would fit every one. The table was one really long and ran along the whole back wall of the restaurant. Then, Robert set the tables with chop sticks, napkins, water and these crispy white wafers thingies that tasted like yummy deep fried stuff.

When the rest of the party came, mommy got up and hugged and introduced us to everyone. We met Noelle's sister, Emily and two other couples. Two of the couples had kids and a bunch of other people. The father of the two girls was a Spaniard and talked spanish to his daughter, English to my Dad, and French to everyone else. The older girl spoke Spanish along with English and French. Every one else knew French except us and most of them knew Khmer and English. One couple had two little girls and the other had two little boys. The older of the two girls and two boys were about the same age and probably around four years old and the little ones were both around one year old. So the little kids all had play mates to play with after dinner.

After every one was seated and had a menu, Robert took our orders. I hadn't chosen yet, so mommy just said that she, Mia, Zander, Sarah and I wanted pho. After a few minutes, Robert gave everyone deep fried spring rolls that were really hot and yummy. Robert seemed to think that we didn't know how to eat spring rolls because we hadn't eaten them right away. He kept telling us (in sign language because he couldn't speak English) to dip the rolls into the sauce that he gave us but we already knew this so I was a little annoyed that he thought we were stupid. The reason we hadn't eaten was because the spring rolls were too hot. Then our pho came and we didn't start eating that right away because we were still finishing the spring rolls. Robert showed us how to put sprouts in the pho but we already knew how to eat pho. I really liked my pork pho, especially the noodles that were in it. The pho was really yummy.

When the little kids finished eating, they ran around. Since they had lolly pops, they looked at their blue and red tongues. The kids were really cute.Daddy sat with the other guys at the table next to ours and talked politics. We thought it was really funny how they talked politics because they were so tense. Mommy sat with all her cousins and family at a big round table a little ways away. They were a really loud gaggle of girls and they were talking in three different languages: English, Khmer, and French.

At around eleven, the one year olds started to get really tired and started crying. When the babies started to cry the party was over. Plus, one of the families was flying back to Spain the next day to spend time with the grand parents. So we all said good-bye and we headed back to the metro stop right down the street and went home. Having dinner with Mommy's family was really cool because we got to meet her cousins and she did too.

By Kayley Rolph